


Futures

by swimmingfox



Series: Potential [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: And shagging, Auto-destruction, Bit pretentious, Boozing, Bristol, British references a-plenty, Comedy, F/M, Fauvism, Fluxus, Is where it's at, Just light and sparky and fun hopefully, Loads of talking about wanking, M/M, Modern AU, Modern Art Focus, Professor Fox loves her NOTES, Romance, Smoking, Superrealism, Surrealism, Swearing, Symbolism, UK - Freeform, Weed, cubism, dada, is it, joints, wanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-26 16:13:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6246832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimmingfox/pseuds/swimmingfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya and Sansa return from their summer holiday and into the arms/beds/living room floors of their menfolk. Sandor and Sansa’s relationship is still in very early days, with rather varying ideas of what is happening. Arya and Pod mostly just continue to be cute, because I can’t help it.</p><p>Meanwhile, Jojen and Tommen’s relationship goes a bit rocky, in a literal and figurative sense. </p><p>HIGH DRAMA! Not really. Comedy, swearing, sex, slang, modern UK setting. A continuation of my Modern AU series, following Potential and Rebound. Featuring an EXTRA JOJEN POV, with many high-art references. Plus added Robin, for Robin-fans (yes! they now exist!).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fauvism

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Asbestos Mouth](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Asbestos+Mouth), [LittleBirdAddicted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleBirdAddicted/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand, um, so it continues. Because I have a problem that no amount of staring at my unfinished canon fics will solve. Another short and sweet one. With a modern(ish) art focus! It gives me something to do.
> 
> I hope y’all don’t mind that there’s no huge drama happening here. I am a bit worried that this will all be VERY uninteresting. There aren’t going to be car chases or character deaths. Or ARE THERE…
> 
> For a pair of fellow Brits! Go read AsbestosMouth’s ‘The Inimitable Clegane!’ for it is awesome! And for LittleBirdAddicted, for representing Bristol.

_‘Purer colours… have in themselves, independently of the objects they serve to express, a significant action on the feelings of those who look at them.’ Henri Matisse._

**Sansa**

‘Helloooo, Stansted!’ Arya was only being slightly sarcastic. Whilst both she and Sansa been sad to leave Lanzarote’s skin-slapping heat, trashy nightlife and sea-swimming, neither of them minded coming back. Because they had people to see.

Pod – he had been doing an internship with an engineering firm in Bristol so couldn’t come along – was at Arrivals, removing his headphones, a smile as wide as the Atlantic on his face. Arya left her suitcase for the last few steps and jumped into his arms. They were stupid-cute. 

Sansa dragged both suitcases up to them. 

Pod stopped kissing Arya and gave Sansa one of his warmly polite grins. ‘Hey, Sansa.’

‘Hey, Pod. Miss us?’

Pod glanced at Arya, who was now slung around his side. Blushed. He basically had his own self-creating range of Mac powder compacts. Every shade. ‘Yeah.’

Sansa let them wander ahead, Pod taking both of their suitcases, Arya gabbling on about body boarding and her best diving feats of the week, and turned her phone on to text Sandor.

 _I’m baaaaack x_. She added a plane emoji and some fireworks.

She had messaged him all the time when they’d been away. Mostly a mixture of selfies in her bikini and how hot it was that day, to which he’d replied mostly in sort of sexy swearwords (to the former) and less sexy swearwords (to the latter).

Sandor didn’t use emojis. He was usually clear enough, in a blunt, concise sort of way. Today’s reply was no exception.

_Get over here._

***

**Jojen**

Jojen was in his default position in the Reed house, which was lying on his back on top of his bed, chopstick-skinny legs stretched out. It may have looked to the untrained eye as if he was doing nothing at all, but all of Jojen’s most inspired thoughts came to him in this supine state – how best to make a meta-fiction about the life and times of Rolandino Roncaglia work, what hallucinogens Hieronymous Bosch must have ingested to paint the great mind-fuckery that was The Garden of Earthly Delights, and how he could earn enough money to visit Kyoto, one his present aims in life. And his current thought, which was how to get Tommen’s pants off.

‘So I’m going on Friday,’ Tommen said now, propped up on his elbow next to him. ‘There’s going to be abseiling as well as climbing. Should be sick.’

I’ll climb you, thought Jojen, idly. Tommen’s jeans were of such an excellent fit that they made him think of Greek classical sculptures. You could put him in Tate Britain. Jojen made a mental note to pick Ms. Sand’s brains about moulage and casting rubber once school started again. She didn’t have a clue about sculpture, really, but she always ordered whatever he wanted for the art department.

Tommen hadn’t said anything else since his sexy little outburst some weeks ago, which had probably been fuelled by all the Haribos they had eaten. I want to put my mouth around you, he had whispered to Jojen, his eyes rather heavy and his cheeks the colour of a Cox’s Pippin. 

_Cocks_ , thought Jojen again, less idly. ‘Gotcha,’ he said. ‘Who’s going, then?’

‘Oh, you know, the usual crew.’ Tommen enthusiastically reeled off a list of names which sounded more like racehorses or pedigree dogs than teenagers – his friends were a horde of rancid rugby-lovers who would end up reading the Daily Telegraph, working in the City and blowing coke up prostitutes’ arses in Soho. Maybe Tommen would become a wanker-banker too.

It was still a bit baffling, really, how they had ended up together. Jojen had always meant it to be a bit of fun, a challenge to alleviate the boredom of schoolwork, which he could mostly complete with astonishing accuracy and speed (science, maths) or great flair (English, art). And the pursuit had become so dogged that upon seeing Tommen at the charity dance with some Hello Kitty-loving girl, he’d wanted to throw up.

Until Tommen bounded up to him like a Labrador puppy a little later that night. After a bit of awkward chatting (Jojen, discomfitingly, as well as Tommen), they had ended up kissing in the shadows of the school car park.

It had been Tommen’s first boy-kiss. He’d been so cute about the whole thing, a perfectly delicious mixture of halting and eager and desperate to not be shit. And so it had continued. Somehow, because of Tommen’s innocent, lens-flare-halcyon-schooldays sort of vibe, Jojen thought he’d be responsible. Legal. Tommens’ birthday was six weeks away. Six weeks and three days.

Kissing him was pretty delightful, to be fair. He did always basically taste of apples. Jojen would run though all the varieties he could think of as they lay there, tongues in each other’s mouths, with some Japanese dub on in the background (if at Jojen’s), or some Taylor Swift (if at Tommen’s). Rubens. Discovery. Egremont Russet. Empire. Spartan. Lord Lamborne. None of them ever helped his erection go down much.

If he didn’t think of apples, he would let his mind separate Tommen into bits, moving colours away from form. If a Fauvist had painted Tommen, they would have used gold, red, amber, _umber_ , pink. Bold autumn colours. And maybe had a wank at the same time.

‘What will you do?’ said Tommen. ‘When I’m away?’

‘Oh, you know. The usual.’ Which was sloping around Bristol with a fag or a joint in one hand and a book in the other (current read: ‘The Beast In The Jungle And Other Stories’ by Henry James), or at home watching Yasujirō Ozu films and eating crunchy peanut butter out of the jar. More than anything else, he’d be working on his piece. Jojen did not harbour ambitions to be an artist; he was one. He’d given himself the summer holidays to make something big. Something genre-destroying. He just wasn’t quite sure what it was yet.

Tommen (current read: the latest Young Bond instalment) sat up and stretched. Looked back at him with rosy cheeks. It was a warm August, for once. ‘I’ll send you photos.’

‘You do that,’ said Jojen. Ideally with nothing on but climbing ropes, he thought.

***

**Arya**

‘You waited ‘til I got home?’ said Arya incredulously.

It was A-Level exam results day. Back at his, Pod was holding a slim white envelope in his hands. ‘Yeah. I – didn’t want to open them without you.’ He wanted so desperately to get the three As he needed for Imperial College. A job, money to look after Uncle Ilyn, the ability to build big fuck-off bridges.

Arya would either rip her GCSE results open with her teeth the second she got them next week, or possibly burn them without looking. She hadn’t decided yet. ‘Fuck, well, come on, open them.’ She nodded at his hand. Made a drum roll sound.

Pod took a small, fortifying breath in and opened the envelope. Removed the three slips of paper and gazed at them.

‘And?’ She was sitting on the kitchen top, her favourite place in Pod’s house (apart from his bed, obviously), and angled both legs out to drag him towards her with her heels.

He let her, standing between her knees and staring at the slips for a moment longer, before he breathed in again. Fuck, she thought. If he didn’t get what he wanted, he was going to Edinburgh, which was basically the other side of the world and she would have to decapitate herself out of sheer misery. 

‘Four As,’ he said, and gave a sheepish smile.

‘If course it’s four fucking As,’ she said, both relieved that he was going to be in London because that was nearer (still three hours on the Megabus, all that she would ever be able to afford) and gutted because he was still going away and she wouldn’t be able to roll around in his bed laughing at his music three nights a week. ‘You’re a genius. A hot genius.’

She hugged him and gave him a loud kiss on the cheek. And another on the neck, which tasted of sunshine and Lynx deodorant. Uncle Ilyn came in with an empty mug and looked at them both. 

‘Four As,’ Pod said to him, and Ilyn shook his hand and thumped him on the back. 

A little while later, the two of them were sitting on a blanket outside in the plain little back garden, drinking cheap bubbles to celebrate, and eating the chocolate peanut butter cupcakes that Pod had made for Arya’s return. Arya was making the same noises that she made when she came, except more loudly. ‘I totally did not eat cakes this good in Lanzarote,’ she said, through a big mouthful. ‘In fact, I ate no cakes in Lanzarote. Jojen would go mental for these. Not that he is getting any.’

He just squinted a smile at her and ate another one. ‘You’ve got freckles.’

‘Damn straight.’ Arya tilted her face up into the sun. It wasn’t Spanish island-style bastard hot fuckery, but it was still lovely bright yellow _sun_ , which was some sort of minor miracle for England in August. ‘Don’t you want to know if I went off with any cute boys?’

His smile became more rueful, glancing at her. ‘Not really.’

‘The answer is obviously not because you are the cutest. Even though there were tons of them in their shorts, and the locals wear well tiny trunks.’ 

She _could_ have gone off with boys, if she’d wanted to. There were two madly blonde, madly _German_ boys who liked her because she played football like a boss and who kept earnestly talking to her about Bayern Munich and Skyrim whilst quite politely looking down her top. Sansa, of course, was consistently eyed up by German boys, Spanish boys, French boys, Italian boys, basically any boy, and a few girls, because she was Sansa. And she totally loved it, casually strutting around with her big shades on and very little else, but she was even more virtuous than Arya. She spent most of her time checking her phone for messages from Sandor, which was more irritating than itchy-as-fuck mosquito bites.

Arya tried to imagine Pod in tiny trunks, sipping some ridiculous rainbow-coloured cocktail, reading physics books with his red-framed Ray Ban shades on. She had missed him. And not just his Bake-Off levels of culinary badassery. ‘I’m sorry you haven’t got a holiday this year,’ she said, putting her feet in his lap. ‘That sucks.’

He leant back on his hands. ‘It’s all good. It’ll be worth it.’

‘My folks are back next week. They’re wanting to hold a –’ she rolled her eyes. ‘ _Thing_ for my GCSE results. Even if I die on my arse.’ 

‘You won’t.’

She took a big breath in. The next question felt almost as big as the whole I-love-you thing of a few weeks ago. ‘Will you – come? To our house?’ Pod’s family consisted of Uncle Illyn. Arya’s family was massive and noisy and crazy. Her mum and dad knew plenty, and seemed to approve from afar (even if Aunt Lysa did Arya no favours by whispering suspiciously about Pod down the phone to her sister), but they hadn’t met him. The idea made her mostly want to peel her own skin off her face. And yet she did want them to meet him really. And to like him.

‘That’d be really nice.’ He glanced over his shades at her. Peanut butter chocolate eyes. ‘I’ll make something to bring.’

Yeah. They will probably like him, she thought. 

***

**Sansa**

‘Hello,’ said Sansa, in quite a croaky old lady voice. Her bra was pushed up above her breasts.

Sandor was sprawled, naked apart from his socks, on the sofa next to her, looking like he had just run two marathons back to back. ‘Hello yourself,’ he said, the way he always greeted her – in fact, the very first words he said to her six weeks ago in the pub. He put a palm flat on his forehead. ‘Fucking Nora.’

She would have said hello when Sandor first opened the door, but what with him immediately pulling her inside – with the words ‘thank fuck’ - and putting her against the wall, taking her leggings down, putting her on the stairs, them both bumping down the stairs a bit, dragging her into the living room, probably staining the sofa, and finally finishing the whole thing off next to the coffee table, where Sandor had banged his head and sworn even more loudly than he normally did, it had been a little impossible.

She was going to have a carpet burn at the base of her spine. And her knees. ‘Did you miss me?’ she said, unhooking her bra and draping it over the arm of the sofa.

‘What the hell do you think?’ He rolled his head over, looking a little like a wild beast that’d got fed up of being chased. ‘Aye,’ he said, in a less vehement voice, glancing down her form. ‘I did.’ He put his hand to his temple again. ‘I’m going to have a right shiner from that. You’re a devil-woman.’

They had only been seeing each other five weeks if you took off her holiday. Dates had mostly consisted of drinks in an old-man pub (if Sandor was choosing) or a too-loud wine bar (if Sansa was choosing) before they headed back to his for shouty, sweaty sex. They hadn’t really done much civilised dating – dinner then a movie then a boat trip down the river, say – but she didn’t mind too much. They’d gone out for a couple of curries and he’d just stared at her from the other side of the table, crunching poppadums, his eyes burning hotter than the jalfrezi she was trying to eat. She just liked hanging out with him, especially as a break from third year preparatory reading, and normally they did actually _talk_. Just usually after the sex.

‘ _You’re_ a devil-man,’ she said.

He just smiled a completely knackered smile, his eyes closed. His chest had gone several deep shades of red and purple. ‘Christ. I’m going to need regular physiotherapy.’

‘We could get a masseur in for afterwards.’

‘Aye, that sounds about right.’ He let out a long, doggy sigh and scratched his beard. The world seemed to be calming. ‘You have a good time, then?’

‘Yeah. It was lovely.’ Apart from the one day that Arya drank so much tequila she puked into the pool and Sansa had to apologise in her crap Spanglish and help clear it up. Two quite endearing German boys had helped too.

‘All those pictures. Bloody hell. I was in public places sometimes when you sent me them. Could have been done for indecency.’ 

She giggled and pulled a cushion onto her stomach to hug. 

He eyed her. ‘No holiday romances for you, then?’

‘No.’ Of course not, she thought.

He still didn’t seem to realise that she wasn’t interested in seeing anyone else. That she just wanted to see him. He practically seemed to actively try and suggest she should see other guys, though she was fairly sure he didn’t want her to really. He just didn’t seem to quite accept that he was quite enough for her. 

‘I wasn’t looking for a holiday romance,’ she said, and gazed at him quite meaningfully.

He stared back, a searching, not-quite trusting look. Before he blinked and the demonstrative, practical Sandor was back. ‘Right,’ he said, standing up. In his socks. ‘Put some bloody clothes on and I’ll make us a cuppa.’ He glanced down at her. Or rather, gazed, as if he’d only just really noticed her. ‘On second thoughts, forget the first bit. Fucking hell. They should put you in a fucking art gallery. You’re like that –‘ he looked blankly in front of him. ‘That naked woman lying down. With her arse on show.’

‘The Rokeby Venus,’ she said, feeling extremely wonderful for both knowing that (school trip to the National Gallery) and for apparently looking like her. She stretched out on the sofa in a rough approximation of the correct pose and twisted her neck back up at him. Fluttered her eyelashes.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Sandor, kneeling down. ‘You can forget that second bit as well.’

***

**Jojen**

‘Ah. Jojen.’

Tywin Lannister was in the front garden as Jojen hopped off his bike (a racer, as black and skinny as his own look) and wheeled it up the driveway. Tywin had a pair of rose-clippers in his hand.

Grandfather Lannister’s abode, where Tommen had been shipped to in order to be a star pupil for Casterly Academy, was something of a trip. A biggish house out of town enough to be called the country, with security gates, two pale stone pillars and a colossal Tibetan mastiff that was more lion than dog. Jojen had been bollocked by the fearsome headmaster more than once for smoking a variety of substances on school grounds, but always got around it by scoring A* in everything. Since his liaison with Tommen, he had won the old tiger over by being impressed at the impeccably-tailored garden, which Tywin tended himself. All very Capability Brown.

‘Nice, Mr. L.’ 

Tywin was standing next to a trim bush of gold roses with ruby red-tinged petals. ‘I suppose, seeing as it is the school holidays, that you may address me as Tywin.’

Old Lannister wasn’t so bad, really. It was pretty cool at least that he’d been so gracious about having Jojen round occasionally. It was pretty clear that the two of them weren’t battling it out on FIFA (one of Tommen’s regular past-times). But perhaps that was another reason for Jojen playing it safe – Lannister still had the right to do him for underage sex. If nothing else, those clippers could easily be a castration tool. 

Jojen squinted slightly at him. ‘You’re alright, sir. We’ll keep it clean.’

‘Very well.’ Tywin looked at the rose bush. ‘Yes. It’s coming along. Need to keep it pruned.’

Red. Gold. Dewy. Tommen, if Tommen was a flower. ‘Got any further with what you’re going to call it?’

Tywin gazed at the flowers. ‘I was edging towards ‘Hear Me Roar.’ Something a little more singular than all those usual nonsensical fripperies.’

‘Solid,’ said Jojen.

Tommen came out. Bright and playful as usual, with a hint of sweatiness. Lovely. ‘Hey,’ he said, slightly breathless. He’d either been having a wank or thinking about having a wank. They had done that much at least – Jojen would murmur dirty fucking sexy things in Tommen’s ear whilst he gave himself a good scrumming, as Jojen had ended up thinking of it. 

‘Alright, said Jojen, and followed him inside.

Twenty minutes later, and Tommen was slightly high on his second pint of coke. ‘I think there’s going to be gorge-walking. And coasteering. And some of the abseiling is going to be freefalling, like off bridges just into thin air, not down cliffs, which sounds well good.’

He didn’t really drink, though it had been amusing to see him drunk on wife-beater (of course! Because his dolt-friends had been with him) on a couple of occasions, even if he did have to smooth his hand over his back while Tommen chucked it all back up into the loo. Still, caffeine and sugar seemed to be quite enough for him.

‘You’re going to be away for ages,’ said Jojen, laying a hand on Tommen’s stomach and gazing at the framed print of Henri Rousseau’s ‘The Hungry Lion Throws Itself On The Antelope’ on the wall. He was fairly sure that Tywin had bought that for his grandson. Tommen wasn’t really into art.

‘Yeah, but it’s ok. We’ve got WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger and SnapChat and Kik and BeBip and KwikMouth.’

‘Mmm,’ said Jojen, rolling over and kissing his lovely, warm neck. 

‘Yeah, and they’re going to teach us survival skills, and how to make fire from scratch, and building food-pits and stuff. Like Bear Grylls.’

‘Don’t go off with any rock-climbers,’ Jojen said, into his neck, slightly thinking of a naked Bear Grylls abseiling carefully down into a burly wilderness man’s crotch.

‘I won’t,’ said Tommen, and shivered a bit.

‘Speaking of rocks.’ Jojen put his hand on Tommen’s crotch, where sure enough, a metamorphic formation had presented itself. He was fed up of wanking to arty gay porn. Staring at men sucking other off with a narration of Frederico Garcia Lorca (in the native Spanish, of course) was cool, but only some of the time.

‘Yeah,’ said Tommen, in quite an ambiguous, faint way.

‘Yeah?’ said Jojen, very gently, trying to make it not necessarily seem like a question about his extremely hard cock, but an affirmative about all sorts of possible non-sexual things.

‘Yeah.’ This time Tommen’s voice sounded a bit more solid. Jojen stilled and looked at him. Tommen stared back, his eyes both summer-ripe Gala apples, a little nervous but robust, too. ‘Will you, um –’ 

Jojen waited, his hand resting lightly on Tommen’s zip.

‘Will you go down on me?’ said Tommen.

Well, fuck it. Jojen would face the Wrath of Lannister if he had to. He was an eel, slipping through swampy reeds. He could get out of anything. ‘Of course I will,’ he said in his warmest, most assured voice.

And he did just that, whilst Tommen made noises not unlike those he made when he was playing FIFA, except a little more quietly, no doubt for fear of eagle-eared Tywin, who could probably hear a pin drop three roads away.

As he lay between Tommen’s legs, Jojen had one of those weird blinky-green flashes he sometimes had, though normally they were only when he was stoned. Tommen smashed up on the ground. Or was it _himself_ smashed up on the ground? It was hard to see as the vision was from very high up, as if he was a bird. The boy’s hair was quite dark. Jojen tried to ignore it. Now wasn’t the time for tripping. Sober tripping. Weird. 

Back to it. To Tommen’s lovely little squirmings, and Jojen knew how to up the ante at just the right time (arty gay porn came with benefits), and – there he was. 

Jojen’s own Golden Delicious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PICSET! Linkable [here](http://i.imgur.com/INIPkzU.jpg).
> 
> **PROFESSOR SWIMMINGFOX’S 20TH-CENTURY ART CLASS** :
> 
> Fauvism!
> 
> Until Fauvism, colour had always aimed to describe and represent an object. The Fauvists (French for ‘wild beasts’) separated colour from its usual purpose, instead conveying mood and existing as a separate element. The balance of colour and form in an artwork was now important in a new way, with each element playing a specific role to create something strong and unified, with strident colours and wild brush work. 
> 
> Fauvism valued individual expression, and the artist’s very direct and emotional response to its surroundings. Key Fauvists were Henri Matisse and André Durin. Henri Rousseau was an important influence on their work, which preceded Expressionism. Here’s his [hungry lion painting](http://www.henrirousseau.net/images/famous/the-hungry-lion-throws-itself-on-the-antelope.jpg), tee hee! 
> 
> In non-Fauvist news, here is Velasquez’s [The Rokeby Venus](http://albertis-window.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Velasquez-The-Rokeby-Venus-1648.jpg)! 
> 
> **  
>  PRETENTIOUS JOJEN NOTES  
>  **
> 
> Rolandino Roncaglia was an Italian who was sensationally tried for sodomy in 1347. He confessed that he had never had sex with his wife or any other woman, being unable to get an erection. After his wife died of plague, Rolandino started to prostitute himself, wearing female dresses.
> 
> The painter Hieronymous Bosch's triptych, depicting Eden, Earth and The Last Judgment, was basically created during a bad trip. It's believed that Bosch suffered from St. Anthony's Fire, a disease caused by a form of the grain ergot (later partly used in LSD), that among other symptoms causes terrifying hallucinations. Have a look at it if you dare in this [CHALLENGING INTERACTIVE SITE!](https://tuinderlusten-jheronimusbosch.ntr.nl/en)
> 
> Yasujirō Ozu was a master of Japanese cinema. His style was economical and disciplined, and he was known for his almost still-life compositional shots, there purely for their form.
> 
> Frederico Garcia Lorca was an avant-garde Spanish poet who anguished privately over his homosexuality. He had an affair with Salvador Dali and was later arrested and executed by Fascist troops.
> 
>  **BRITISH SLANG AND OTHER STUFF** :
> 
> The age of consent in the UK is 16. 
> 
> wife-beater = Stella Artois beer, as in drunk by the sort of tossers who might then take a hand to their missus, ugh. I.e. a right trashy beer. 
> 
> A-Levels are what you do when you’re in the last year of school, ie aged 17/18. Arya has done her GCSEs. You finish your A-Levels or GCSEs in June and get your results in August.
> 
> 'Fucking Nora' just means 'fucking hell.' No one really says this but it does exist! I had to find something else for him to say besides 'Christ on a bike,' ah haha.
> 
> Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown = a renowned 18th century English landscape gardener. Very ordered.


	2. Symbolism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the comments! I draw deeply on them in the same manner that Jojen draws deeply on - well, you can probably guess.

_‘We want Realism’s wealth of experience and Symbolism’s depth of feeling. All art is a problem of two opposites.’ Cesare Pavane (Italian poet)_

_‘All art is erotic.’ Gustav Klimt_

***

**Jojen**

_A boy with legs like elastic bands, riding a penny farthing. A boy’s name written on a cereal box. Being told not to push. Standing very high on a cliff. Arya, but not-Arya. People pulling grass out of his ears._

Jojen’s dreams were always so weird. Especially as he wasn’t even asleep. They always had this swirly quality, like he was on a ship, or completely pissed on sherry with some old queen, or pissed on sherry on the Queen Elizabeth II.

But then again, he was completely stoned. 

***

**Arya**

Arya was trying out her new Faber Castell Polychromos on a drawing that combined giant wolves fighting dragons but in a futuristic, post-nuclear Bristol setting, which was basically the centre of Bristol at 3am on a Saturday night. She had a thing about wolves that no amount of drawing could ever exorcise.

Robin burst into the room theatrically (he didn’t really make an entrance in any other way) and flung himself onto her bed, putting his arm over his face and making quiet wailing noises.

‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ she said, putting her pencils away before he rolled all over them, cried at having pricked himself and started going on about Sleeping Beauty.

Robin continued to flail about, in the style of a dying fish. God, he was so fucking dramatic. Aunt Lysa had put him in some stage school over the summer to let him burn off some energy on some Shakespeare or Arthur Miller or – Arya couldn’t think of any more playwrights – and it had only made him worse. Now he was trying to write his own monologues and compose multi-tracked euphonium, tenor recorder and keyboard scores for them. Arya had not entirely forgiven Pod for showing Robin how to use Garageband.

‘Have those shits been bullying you again?’ 

Robin shook his head and continued sobbing.

She had tracked down two much bigger ten-year-olds who had been nicking his lunch money two months ago. He’d gone even more waif-like than normal, not that Lysa noticed a thing what with being all wrapped up in her new boyfriend, this douchey Bristol hippie dude who kept going on about rebirth and reincarnation all the time. Arya had threatened to fuck the two bullies up with quite a lot of gruesomely graphic torture involving head-clamps and thumbscrews and they’d gone quiet on him.

‘What then? Spit it out.’

Her insane little cousin took his arm away from his face. There was snot all over his cheek. ‘I’m in love,’ he said, the last word stretching so far that it became another sob.

She stared at him. ‘Amazing.’ And started laughing.

He gazed at her, moist-eyed. ‘How can you laugh?’ He spoke to the ceiling. ‘You must not mock my despair.’

Arya laughed more. ‘Oh my god.’

Robin wiped his cheek and folded his arms, looking all huffy. ‘ _You’re_ in love.’

She stopped laughing. ‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘Who says?’ Probably Sansa had been singing it from the rooftops, like some idiot girl in a musical.

‘No one says. It’s obvious. You are so beautiful together –’ this word became a goatish sort of bleat and he began sobbing again.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Arya. ‘You’ve properly got it, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he said and rolled over onto his stomach. ‘My life is over.’

***

**Sansa**

They were having their post-sex cup of tea in bed, which seemed to have become a habit (Sandor said if he was going to continue not smoking, he needed to replace it with tea), and Sansa was sitting between his legs, stuck to him a little bit by their not quite-evaporated sweat.

‘It’s a bit strong,’ she said.

‘I know. You do well to take it at all.’

She craned round to him. ‘The _tea_.’

She could hear his face crease up. ‘You’ll be asking for Lady bloody Grey next.’

Sansa leant against him. The warm cradle of his chest and shoulders was so lovely. Like those therapeutic pillows that you put in the microwave. ‘Herbal tea. Chai. Peppermint. Caffeine is not good before bedtime.’

‘For you, maybe. I need all the energy I can get after you’ve put me through the mangle.’

‘ _Mangle_? How old are you again?’

He dug his fingers into the side of her thigh. ‘Watch it, firecracker.’ He’d called her that three times now. Said he couldn’t think of any other nickname, and that would have to do. And that no chance in hell was she calling him anything else but his name. 

She laughed into her tea and they sat quietly for a bit, apart the rustle of her rubbing her foot against his calf. Her phone buzzed and she leant over to get it, ignoring the very deep, very quiet grumble from Sandor’s throat – he didn’t seem to look at his phone every five seconds like she (and almost everyone else in the entire world under the age of thirty) did. 

The message from Arya made her simultaneously burst into giggles and make sounds a bit like pigeons roosting. 

Sandor sighed behind her. ‘You can’t do that and not tell me what it says.’

‘Robin is in love, apparently.’ 

A short, flat silence. ‘Your cousin? Who is ten?’

‘That’s what Arya says.’ 

‘You know he’s got three or four different conditions going on there?’ Sandor said. ‘That kid could have a whole fucking child psychology book devoted just to him.’

Robin was very enamoured with Sandor, even though the object of his adulation mostly folded his arms and glared down at him as if he was a highly irritating woodlouse. Her cousin had asked him several times to star as the giant/yeti/orca/Sun King in his various word-processed, colour-coded playlets, but as yet Sandor had not succumbed. 

‘He’s just _Robin_ ,’ said Sansa, who after the initial alarm of living in close quarters with him, had grown quite used to his eccentric ways, especially when he brought her up a fresh mint tea in the morning, with a slice of lemon measured to the millimetre. ‘He’s awesome.’

‘If you say so,’ said Sandor. 

Sansa tried to ignore the brooding grey elephant in the room, which was not Sandor (he was more like a brown bear mixed with a St Bernard’s with a little dash of honeybadger) but the fact that she had just said the word ‘love,’ out loud. She swore that the atmospheric pressure changed, minutely. He didn’t ask any more about Robin, but just kept slurping at his tea.

Time to change the subject. Sort of. ‘My parents and my little brothers are coming back next week.’

‘Aye, you already said.’

‘Do you fancy – coming to meet them one day?’

He didn’t speak for a while. Put his tea on the bedside table. ‘I don’t really do family.’

She half-turned round to him. ‘I know – I know that your parents are dead.’ They had hardly talked about his personal life – whereas she was always gabbling on about everyone. It had always felt like something she needed to tread very carefully around. ‘Do you not have anyone else in your, I don’t know, your wider family?’

He looked at her very simply. ‘I had a sister. She’s dead, too.’

Sansa put her cup next to his and stared at him. ‘Oh my god. Sandor. I’m so sorry.’

‘And a brother. He might as well be. Dead to me, I mean.’

‘But that’s crazy,’ she said. The idea of any one of her four siblings not being around was horrible.

Immediately, his expression hardened to something she had never quite seen before. Blunt and a little fearsome. ‘Crazy, is it now?’ The sort of voice he used on those pool players when they had first hooked up.

‘I mean – sorry.’ Her eyes fell and she continued more carefully. ‘I don’t know – but if he’s your only family, wouldn’t you try and stay in touch?’

Sandor moved suddenly, shifting his leg from around her and pushing her away a bit at the same time. ‘Don’t try and assume anything, alright? You don’t bloody know me.’ He stood up and stalked out of the bedroom.

Oh god. Sansa stared at the ceiling, her heart thumping. She had said something awful, but she didn’t know what. How the hell was she supposed to know if he didn’t _tell_ her anything? She wasn’t a mind-reader. She pulled her pants on and lay there, the duvet tucked up to her chin, listening to him moving around downstairs and the sound of crockery, quite loud. Maybe he wanted her to leave. Was that it? She’d pissed him off and now she had to scarper?

Sansa stared at the clock. If he didn’t come back in five minutes, she would take it as her cue to go. Until then, she would wallow in her own mystified guilt.

After four minutes and twenty-five seconds, she heard him pad back up the stairs. Breathed a sigh of relief. Or maybe he was coming to chuck her out.

Sandor stood inside the doorway, a big shadow with the hall light behind him. ‘Sorry.’ 

‘ _I’m_ sorry,’ she said, and sat up, hugging the duvet to her chest. ‘You’re right. I don’t know everything about you. But –’ she took a deep breath. ‘I want to. Know more about you.’

He stood there a moment longer, before coming over to the bed. Getting in again beside her. He put his arm out and she scrunched herself next to him, listening to his heart lope on. He didn’t say anything. Maybe that was it for the night. 

Sansa’s own eyes were becoming gluey when Sandor suddenly spoke. ‘My brother did this.’

It took her a moment to realise what he meant. His scars. ‘What?’ she said, tucking her chin onto the soft flesh just below his shoulder. ‘How?’

‘He was a torturing fucker. Probably still is. Put a blowtorch to my face.’

‘What?’ She sat up. ‘No. Oh my god. Sandor.’ She put a hand on his chest. ‘Why?’

‘For the fun of it.’

‘Oh my god.’ She moved so that she was lying fully on him and put her hand to his scarred cheek. He swiftly turned his head to the side as if to get away from her hand, and then seemed to change his mind and allowed her to rest it there. She felt tears salt-sting the corners of both eyes.

‘Alright now, no need for that.’ His voice was warmer, though there was still gravel in it. ‘It was a long old time ago.’

‘How long?’

‘I was seven.’

‘Oh my god.’ Her voice cracked. ‘That is horrible.’

‘Aye. Not great. I didn’t have a lot of fun after that for while, growing up. In and out of hospital. Skin grafts and stuff. Used to stand looking at my good side in the mirror, wishing I had that on both sides.’

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ she said in a tiny cobweb whisper, before realising that she needed to pull herself together. _He_ was the one telling her how he had suffered. ‘I know you hate it,’ she said, softly. ‘And you have every right to. But it’s all I know of you. And I wouldn’t have you any other way.’

Sandor didn’t say anything for ages. His chest rose and fell under her palms. Slow, clouded breaths. ‘I don’t know. I’m just not always so much of a family guy. And anyway, what with how I know your sister, it might be a bit bloody awkward, don’t you think?’

‘No. I don’t think so,’ she said. Arya’s very mature, she wanted to lie.

‘Did Professor Twatface ever meet them?’

She let out a laugh. ‘Oh my god. _No_.’

‘But you want me to?’ He looked itchily vulnerable. Wary.

She didn't hesitate. ‘Yes.’

‘I’ll think about it. Ok?’

‘Yes.’ 

He let out the longest sigh of the night and they both lay very still for a while. She could feel the pulse in his neck against her cheek. The heat of him. 

His next sigh was more energetic, as if he was starting himself back up, a juddery lawnmower engine. ‘There’s only so long I can have you lying on me like that without bloody –’ And he leant a long arm over her, and pulled off her pants.

***

**Jojen**

‘Wow. Shit’s got big.’

Arya had come to see how Jojen was doing with his work-in-progress, which had taken over the entire garden shed at the bottom of the garden. Thankfully, Howland wasn’t really using his lawnmower much. Or the plastic tennis rackets, packets of flower seeds, drill and garden chairs and other paraphernalia that Jojen had piled up – its own installation, really – under the beech tree.

‘Yeah,’ Jojen said. ‘Could do with paring it down a bit.’ 

So far, Jojen had mostly combined mixed-media sculpture with painting. He had become obsessed with collecting tubes – piping, cardboard, garden hose – juxtaposing them, all coils and protuberances, and covering them in paint, impasto-style. There were also old photos of holidays in snow-covered mountains that he’d felt compelled to buy at a car boot sale of holidays, though he wasn’t really sure why he’d included them. Yet. 

Arya stood gazing at it all for a bit before turning round with a grin. ‘Missing Tommen much?’

Jojen looked at it again. Holes. Lots of holes. He had gone a bit Symbolist. ‘Hmm,’ he said.

‘ _I_ think it is magnificent,’ said Robin, who Arya had brought along, under sufference. Her aunt was at some two-day retreat with her new man, who was an illusionist. Today, in honour of visiting Jojen it seemed, Robin was wearing a nineteenth-century artist’s smock and floppy beret. 

‘Thanks, tiger,’ said Jojen, and winked at him.

‘It makes me think of love.’ Robin looked at him matter-of-factly. ‘I am in love, you see.’

‘Right,’ said Jojen, raising his eyebrows. ‘Nice one, bro.’

Robin gave a blissfully melancholy sigh before looking a bit more alert. ‘I could compose you some music to accompany it if you like. I’ve been learning about Wagner’s use of the leitmotif in my Saturday music class.’

‘Thanks. I’ll think about it.’

The little man looked madly pleased, before curling his nose up. ‘What is that smell?’

The whole shed, in fact Jojen’s entire aura, gave off the mustily sweet scent of weed. ‘Plantlife, my friend,’ he said.

Robin began to sing. ‘ _How many gentle flowers grow in an English country garden_?’ He had the sort of voice that should have been in a cathedral next to other woefully innocent boys in cassocks. 

‘Sweet Jesus,’ said Arya to him. ‘Do you ever stop?’

‘ _I’ll tell you now, of some that I know, and those I miss I hope you’ll pardon_ ,’ sang Robin in response.

‘You know what you’re really singing about there, right?’ she said, raising her eyebrows. ‘ _Cunt_ -ry garden. Flowers. Sing that to your lady love when you next see her.’

Robin’s eyes widened in enlightened astonishment. ‘I _will_.’ He wandered out into the garden, singing about lupins and fox-gloves and forget-me-nots.

Jojen looked at the tubular behemoth in front of him. Blinked. He’d stayed up watching Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’ last night, chased up with a bit of Paul Verlaine, and his brain was still rather fried on jealous insects, stunned souls and nuns having sex with crucifixes. And he’d had the dreams again. Smashed-up boys and Bosch-like warped humans. Trees, a thick forest of them. He should probably try and paint his visions, or whatever the hell they were. Go a bit William Blake on everyone’s arses. But somehow, when he tried to get them out in some form or another, he froze up. The shit he saw was an interior world, and it wanted to stay there. 

The overriding colours came out, though. He would blink green. Hear words and think green. It was like a synesthesia, Blue Rider group-style. Except that everything was associated with green. Different shades of green – teal, bottle, racing, lime, peppermint, spearmint – but always green. It couldn’t just be the weed. Jojen had a gift. Or a problem. One of those.

‘Earth to Jojen.’

‘Hmm?’ He blinked.

‘Having another one of your DeJojen Vu’s?’

‘Having them all the time,’ he said. ‘What did you say?’

‘I said, how’s lionboy doing anyway?’ said Arya, sitting on the only tiny square of floor that wasn’t covered in tubing.

‘I don’t know,’ said Jojen, eyeing his work thoughtfully, and quickly rubbing his hand through his hair to shake the green-blinkiness away (along with a pretty inappropriate image of pubescent cathedral choirboys). ‘Haven’t heard from him much.’

‘Yeah? That’s not like him.’ 

‘Mmm,’ said Jojen. Tommen usually contacted Jojen through several mediums at once, with messages coming machine-gun-like via laptop and phone. Since Tommen had gone to the Lake District, his messages and pictures had dwindled. Rather a lot. ‘He’s just busy climbing and jumping and all that Boy Scout shit. And they’re in the mountains. They probably don’t have much reception.’

‘You’re missing his little arse, aren’t you?’

‘Sure.’ Jojen didn’t ever like to give too much away.

‘I could rent Pod out to you again.’

Jojen had just drawn a breath on his fag and the smoke curled out in the shape of a laugh. ‘I’m not sure he’d be too keen.’ 

Arya had volunteered Pod’s services a few weeks ago when Jojen said he needed life models. Pod had stayed incredibly still for three days – to be honest, Jojen had only needed two but he drew it out so he could study certain parts of him for just that little bit longer, thoughtfully dabbing his brush into the oils. He had needed a lot of pink.

‘He loves it,’ said Arya. ‘He told me.’

Jojen raised his eyebrows.

She grinned. ‘Yeah, ok, he doesn’t. But he wouldn’t mind. He does what I say.’ She nodded, very emphatically, with a big grin on her face. 

‘No need to pimp Pod. I’ll live.’ His phone buzzed. 

Grey. _Bruv got any green goin spare? Missy says u do discount :)_

‘Is that him?’ Arya said, watching Jojen reply. ‘Tommo?’

Outside, Robin was now singing about hedgehogs and dragonflies, and he had shifted the whole song up a fifth.

‘It’s not,’ said Jojen, lightly, rather wishing it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Picset! Linkable [here](http://i.imgur.com/gKdZRwT.jpg).
> 
> ** PROFESSOR SWIMMINGFOX’S 20TH CENTURY ART CLASS! **
> 
> Symbolism!
> 
> Actually, I’m sneaking in a later 19th-century bad boy this time. Symbolism directly followed its more palatable, crowd-pleasing cousin Impressionism, but was its antithesis. The emphasis was on emotions, feelings, ideas and subjectivity, and the meaning behind shapes and colours. The works are personal and express their own ideologies. The Symbolists mixed religious mysticism, the perverse, the erotic and the decadent. It was often characterised by an interest in the occult, the morbid, the dream world, melancholy, evil and death.
> 
> Key Symbolists were Gustav Moreau in France and Aubrey Beardsley in England, and later Gustav Klimt and Edvard Munch. It had its roots in the personal visions of painter and poet William Blake, the aestheticism of the Pre-Raphaelites in England, and the poetic, allegorical, moody dream worlds created by Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others.
> 
> Symbolists were into synthetism – borrowing from other works or forms of art to create new realities. They especially liked to emulate music’s ability to communicate direct meaning, and were interested in Wagner’s leitmotif idea, which is a repeated idea that unifies a work.
> 
> Symbolism was a literary movement too, led by Paul Verlaine and Stephane Mallarmé. Synesthesia (specifically grapheme-colour synesthesia - the ability to associate colours with letters, numbers and sensations) was a prized experience. The Blue Rider group of artists (Franz Marc, Kandinsky), were also very into this.
> 
> PS Egon Schiele, whose hand-cheek self-portrait is in the picset for Sandor, was taught by Klimt and very much influenced by the Symbolists.
> 
> ** BRITISH SLANG NOTES **
> 
> Actually, it's Western rather than British, but a mangle is an old mechanical laundry aid consisting of two rollers, and you press your clothes through them or wring the water from them. To be 'put through the mangle' is like being 'put through the wringer,' ie just flattened or drained or plain old exhausted, in Sandor's case. The fact that I know this expression probably shows my age.


	3. Surrealism/Superrealism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta ta ta to ZoeSong for giving this the once-over! And to Son of ZoeSong for one yoof reference.
> 
> For any eagle-eyed Potential readers, I have had to nip back and change the tiny mention of one character so that I can change her age and have her in here instead. I didn’t know I was going to get so deep into this at the time. SSHHHH.
> 
> Also, a reminder that in the Potential universe, Tommen and Tywin Lannister are no relation to Joffrey and Marcella Baratheon. Just 'cause.

_‘Surrealism to me is reality. Psychedelic vision is reality to me and it always was.’ John Lennon_

_‘What difference does it make whether you're looking at a photograph or looking at a still life in front of you? You still have to look.’ Chuck Close_

 

***

**Sansa**

Sansa had got so excited when she heard about Robin’s news that she insisted on arranging a summit meeting with both her sister and him. ‘Ok, Robin. Tell us all about her.’

Robin sat very straight on the desk chair and gazed into the distance. Today he was wearing a top hat. ‘She is twelve.’

‘Older lady,’ said Arya. ‘Nice one. You are such an animal, Robin.’

‘She is in my drama class,’ he said.

‘Theatrical, like you. Very good,’ said Sansa. 

‘She has brown hair and brown eyes and when she smiles I think of a beautiful autumn morning,’ he said. ‘Her name is Shireen.’

‘Is she a nutter, like you?’ said Arya. ‘Because otherwise, let’s be real, bro, you are not getting shit.’

Sansa nudged Arya. ‘Shhh.’ She used her most gentle voice on Robin. He was so utterly cute. And until Bran and Rickon returned next week, she needed to exercise her helpful big sister vibes on someone. ‘Do you think she likes you back?’

Robin stroked his chin, as if he were Carl Jung. ‘I am not sure,’ he said.

‘Well, is she friendly to you? What is she like when you talk to her?’

‘I do not know. I have not spoken to her yet.’

Arya lay on her back on her bed and burst out laughing. ‘Fucking hysterical.’

Robin pulled out a ragged piece of paper from his pocket. ‘I have written her a sonnet.’

Arya held her sides, as if she was dying. 

‘Ok,’ said Sansa. ‘Well I’m sure that’s very nice, but I think the best thing to do is, well, not read her your poem until you have talked to her. Just ask her about the things you’re doing in class or for her help in learning your lines or something. And find out what she likes. Work with that.’

Robin shunted himself off the bed. ‘Thank you, Cousin Sansa and Cousin Arya,’ he said. ‘I love you both very much. Though not in the same way that I love Shireen.’ He solemnly left the room, or as he would probably have imagined it, _Robin exits left_.

Arya howled. ‘Oh my god. Someone put that boy on fucking Gogglebox or something. He is too good.’

‘You are so mean. Let him have his love. If he says it is love, then – why can’t it be?’

‘Uh- _huh_.’ Her sister gave her dangerous, deadpan eyes. ‘Speaking from experience, are we?’

Sansa lay down next to Arya. ‘No.’ 

It wasn’t love, between her and Sandor. Far too early. But she did truly care about him. He was always there, taking up most of the space in her brain in the same way that he took up most of the space in his bed, his car, the sofa. She thought about the way he rubbed his nose between thumb and forefinger when he was thinking, and the imposing dogs tattooed on his chest which sent a direct signal to her vagina, and his unfussy generosity – always buying the drinks and loads of food for dinner and her bus tickets – and the way he’d started letting her read philosophy passages to him and frowning a lot as he tried to get his head around it. 

She’d felt a rash of disappointment at his reaction to her tentative invitation to meet her folks. Sandor was supposed to be a mature adult, after all. She wouldn’t have dared ever bring Petyr to dinner, but she knew he would have worked the room with ease. He had people skills. Too many, as it had turned out what with his seduction of probably every long-haired, bashfully-blinking undergrad in the department.

Sandor had Sansa skills, she thought. He was so lovely to her, albeit in his own sweary, sweetly grouchy way. But she wanted to display that to the world, not just hole up with him in his little house. It didn’t help that Arya was so scratchy about it all. She just put her hands over her ears and started _lalala_ -ing very loudly if Sansa mentioned him, or pretended to look like she having an epileptic fit. She hadn’t quite forgiven her sister yet for _fucking the worst fucking counsellor in the history of fucking counselling_ , as she put it.

‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ she said to Arya, who had finally calmed down and was playing Clash Royale on her phone.

‘Pod’s taking me to this historical re-enactment thing in the morning. Vikings or some shit.’ She turned her head to Sansa with a look that suggested she might stab her. ‘Don’t laugh.’

Sansa shook her head. ‘Everything you two do is straight-up adorable. Make sure you take pictures. I want to see braids.’

Arya rolled her eyes. 

Sansa stretched. ‘It’s going to be sunny. Tomorrow. Want to go down to the river in the afternoon? We’ll have a picnic. Bring Pod.’

‘Ok. Why?’

Sansa looked very hard at her nails. ‘No reason,’ she lied, utterly.

***

**Arya**

‘This so does not need to happen.’ Arya was walking past the wide crescent sweep of the Amphitheatre by the river.

‘I’m with you on that one.’ Sandor was walking next to Pod, his arms folded.

‘See?’ said Sansa, just ahead of the three of them, turning around, seeming blissfully happy. ‘You’re agreeing on something already.’

Arya and Sandor scowled at each other.

Sansa had totally tricked her. She’d said they were going to go for a picnic in Queen’s Square and to hang out by the river, and that Pod could come. What she not said was that _he_ was going to be there.

She was knackered and bruised and so not in the mood for her sister’s perfect fucking double date afternoon or whatever the shitsticks this was. Pod had taken her to the historical enactment and called her ‘my lady’ for the entire morning, which was hysterical, but felt sort of right, somehow. Perhaps in a past life she’d been some badass fighting princess. And Sansa would have been some trapped damsel in a tower, with stupid Sandor clanking around in armour trying to rescue her.

It was fucking weird. Here was someone she’d actually told quite a lot, things Sansa didn’t know. And he was so _old_. Basically he could be her actual _dad_ , if her dad had been a chav who was too stupid to understand contraception and had got some other teenager up the duff.

Sansa flung her blanket down and said she was off to get them drinks from the café. Took Pod with her, glancing back meaningfully. Sandor stood, in another of his stupid Dad-rock-band t-shirts, looking at the sky like he could do with murdering it.

Arya sat on the blanket picking blades of grass furiously, imagining that they were real blades and that she could hurl them at Sandor, like a circus knife-thrower. ‘You haven’t told her, have you?’

He glanced down at her as if she was a terrier biting his ankles. ‘Told her what?’

How much she was in Sansa’s shadow. How hard it was for everyone to be away. How she missed her mum. How she had to work really hard not to hit people when she was angry. How she (when she had first started at Casterly Academy) had half-heartedly cut herself. Everything else she blurted at him once a week between September and February. Arya stopped picking and stared at him. ‘You really never did listen, did you?’

His sigh was like the sound of a hot air balloon. He sat down on the furthest edge of the blanket. ‘If you mean anything you said in our meetings, then give me some fucking credit.’

So he hadn’t. Well, that was something. ‘Do you like her, then?’ 

‘That’s none of your fucking business.’

‘It _is_ my business. She’s my sister.’ Arya tossed the torn grass between her palms, sifting it until there was nothing left. ‘I’ve got pretty good at fencing, you know.’

Sandor squinted up at the sun. ‘Oh aye. I wouldn’t feel a bloody thing.’ He sat up a bit straighter when Sansa came sauntering back with cans of coke, with Pod behind her carrying big bags of crisps.

***

**Jojen**

If it wasn’t Grey, it was Missy. If it wasn’t Missy it was half the Frey clan. And if it wasn’t the Freys it was Pyp. Everyone always wanted Jojen’s weed.

‘Nice one,’ Pyp said, blowing out a grey-green cloud, looking around at the shed, which had expanded a little more. Jojen had woken up with a need to paint, in the most lifelike manner he could manage, from the car-boot holiday photos of snowy mountains. He didn’t really know why he was so drawn to snow. But afterwards he had added a few things – frogs, balloons, weird limbless boys – so it had gone a bit more surreal. He didn’t really know what the fuck it was any more. It was either genius, or really shit. 

‘Cheers, man,’ said Pyp, unfazed by his surroundings. ‘You are properly reliable.’ He tilted himself on the back two legs of the garden chair and nodded quite intensely at his roll-up before squinting over at Jojen, who was inhaling deeply on his own. ‘Smoking a lot of that are you currently, fam?’

‘No more than usual.’ The dreams had been growing more intense recently. Dali mixed with Jean Arp mixed with a bit of Cheech and Chong. 

‘Safe.’ 

Jojen stared at his fingers. ‘What do you mean?’

Pyp shrugged, a loose, easy movement. ‘Just thought you might be a bit down, bruv, you know. About your little bumbuddy.’

‘Why would I be down? He’s just away for a bit. I can take it.’ The last thing in the world that Jojen would ever want to do was give the impression that he was bothered about the slightest thing. Apocalypse, tidal meltdown, the death of art, he could cope with them all. Well, maybe not the last one.

‘Nah, nah, bruv. I mean about that other boy he’s been getting kissy with, you know?’

Jojen stilled. ‘Other boy?’ he said, lightly. 

‘I don’t know him much. Posh as. Silver spoon, you get me? Like your mans. He’s off on the outdoors trip, innit? Haven’t you seen the photos?’

Jojen actually tried to avoid Facebook. He found it – trifling. Distracting from higher arts. ‘No, I haven’t.’

Pyp widened his eyes, and cupped one hand over his mouth. ‘Ohhhh, sorry bruv.’ He put both of his hands out. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’

‘I’m not shooting anyone,’ said Jojen, closing his eyes and thinking, suddenly, of Edvard Munch’s Melancholia I and Bergman’s Winter Light and possibly shoving a rifle in his mouth.

***

**Sansa**

It wasn’t going too badly. Admittedly she and Pod had done most of the talking, whilst Arya and Sandor glared at each other, but neither of them had sworn much and neither of them had stalked off, so Sansa was considering this progress. Now they had walked along the Harbourside past groups of cheerful people enjoying beers and the sparkling river on their weekend, and found a clear spot to settle down again.

‘Christ, it’s hot,’ said Sandor, eyeing the sky. It was about 21 degrees. He had eaten fifteen mini sausage rolls, four Scotch eggs and an inordinate amount of chicken satay sticks.

‘It’s _beautiful_ ,’ said Sansa, lying back on the blanket on the cobbles with her face to the sun, her legs dangling over towards the water. She had had a little can of gin and bitter lemon and was feeling breezy. ‘You’d tan, you know, if you actually sat in the sun,’ she said to him, her eyes closed.

Sandor made a low, unconvinced humming noise, like a quite angry, late-summer bee.

She opened her eyes and turned her head to him. He was eyeing her now slightly-exposed stomach, not very surreptitiously. Arya made a quiet, irritable noise with her teeth. ‘Do you fancy getting us ice creams?’ Sansa said to him. The Mr Whippy van was warbling dolorously not far away.

‘Yeah. Make yourself useful,’ said Arya.

He narrowed his eyes at Arya, before looking over at the extremely long queue by the van. ‘Fine.’ He got up - a slow unfolding of limbs and lots of grumbly breaths – and stood over all of them. ‘Let’s take your bloody order, then.’

‘Lemon Calippo, please,’ said Sansa, with one eye open, trying to look secretly seductive, and Sandor totally not noticing.

‘Vanilla Magnum, please,’ said Pod. 'Or a Fab.'

‘Twister,’ said Arya. Sansa took her sunglasses off and looked at her with her best patient-big-sister eyes. Arya rolled hers. ‘ _Please_ ,’ she said.

‘Bunch of bloody toddlers,’ said Sandor and walked towards the ice-cream van.

Arya lay down next to her and put her cap over her eyes. ‘You are so unbelievable,’ she said.

‘What?’ said Sansa, innocently.

‘I can’t believe you would like, fucking _double-blind-date_ us. Ugh. I feel dirty.’

‘I just want you two to get on.’

‘You can’t force us to.’

‘Pod likes him.’

Arya looked over at Pod, who looked mildly panicked and cutely guilty. Guiltily cute. ‘Yeah. He’s cool,’ he said.

‘Thanks a _lot_ ,’ Arya said, in a daggery way, except Sansa still spotted the miniscule, forgiving grin she gave him.

‘Just – try and be nice,’ Sansa said. ‘He’s had a lot of shit too, you know.’

‘Yeah? Like what?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘Fine. Whatever.’ Arya turned her phone on and started playing that game she was addicted to again, and the three of them lay there, until a shadow blocked out the sun.

‘That was quick,’ said Sansa with her eyes still closed, stretching her arms up above her head to show him a bit more of her stomach.

‘And _that_ is a view,’ said an unfamiliar voice.

Arya had already sat up. Sansa put her hand over her eyes to look. A boy, Arya’s age or thereabouts, was standing right by their blanket, and two others were standing a little way behind him. 

‘Oh, fuck. Fuck off,’ said her sister. Pod sat up. 

‘I’m surprised to see you here,’ said the boy. ‘And not in some juvenile delinquent institution getting fucked by lesbians with supersize dildos.’

‘Woah,’ said Sansa, and sat up too. Pod stood up. 

‘Yeah?’ said Arya. ‘That’s where you should be. You’d love it. You’d be their favourite little bitch.’

‘Arya?’ said Sansa. ‘Do – you guys know each other?’ It wasn’t friendly banter. They looked like they were two dogs fired up for a fight. Well, Arya did – although she was wary too, and almost scared. The boy looked as if he was polished daily by maids. The sort who hung around on racecourses drinking champagne and pinching girls’ arses and waving money around. He was wearing a very pale pink shirt with the sleeves rolled up and mirrored sunglasses were perched on top of his head. His hair was very golden. ‘I could still sue you, you know,’ he said to Arya, with a strange, waxy grin.

Sansa knew, then, who he was. Joffrey. The boy who paid girls to give him blowjobs, videoed them and put them online. Including a bolshy and drunk Arya (house party, cheap vodka, £100 on the table), who had subsequently smashed his hand up with a cricket bat in one of her classes. He’d been a budding tennis star, but when his reputation for exploiting girls (usually under sixteen) was made public, it had all got swept under the carpet by his mother. Thank god. 

‘Go on, then,’ said Arya. ‘I don’t fucking care.’ She looked behind him. ‘Need your cronies to back you up when you’re talking to a girl?’

He eyed her for a second, before taking a step closer and dropping his voice, almost warmly. ‘You’ll never know when I’m going to fuck your shit up,’ he said, as if explaining something to a dear little old lady or a small child. He glanced down at Arya’s hand. ‘What is it you like doing again? Drawing little cartoon animals? I’ve thought of quite a few ways I could break you.’

‘Don’t speak to her like that,’ said Pod, in his usual, incredibly unfussy way. 

Joffrey looked at him, almost pleased. ‘Who’s this?’

‘You’ve said what you want to say. Just go,’ Pod said.

Joffrey looked him up and down as if Pod was a racehorse that would have no chance against his own. ‘So you actually found someone else’s cock to suck?’ he said to Arya, in the same polished, sing-song voice. ‘This fat cunt?’

‘Oh my god,’ said Sansa. ‘Seriously?’ 

Pod looked unutterably hurt. 

‘You spoilt little idiot-fuck.’ Arya lunged at him and both he and Sansa grabbed an arm each. Arya struggled, twisting round to Pod. ‘Didn’t you hear what he just said to you?’

‘It’s not worth it,’ said Pod. ‘He’s just a dickhead.’

‘So cutting.’ Joffrey put a hand on his chest as if his heart was giving up, a studied mock-hurt on his face. ‘I’ll never recover.’

Arya was trying to wrestle her way out of Sansa and Pod’s grip. People near them were starting to look round. ‘Ow. _Arya_ ,’ said Sansa, before she addressed Joffrey. ‘I think it’s best if you go now, ok?’ It all felt very unreal. 

‘Not when I’m having so much fun.’ He eyed Arya with a sort of violent delight. He wasn’t a fighting dog. He was the one watching the dogs tear each other to pieces. ‘She’s like a coked-up little Tasmanian devil. But more ugly.’

 _He_ looked a little coked-up, Sansa thought. Very dark pupils. 

Arya struggled some more. ‘Please just let me cut his dick off.’

‘I remember you from school,’ Joffrey was looking Sansa up and down, eyes lingering just below her midriff, enough to make her want to change her clothes immediately. ‘The pretty one.’

‘I leave you lot for two minutes.’ Sandor was back, ice creams between his fingers, casting a faintly suspicious look at Joffrey and the two boys behind him.

Joffrey looked up at Sandor with a curled lip and back to Sansa. ‘What a shame,’ he said, in a falsely pitying voice. ‘It’s all gone a bit Beauty and the Beast over in this corner. Please excuse me while I scrape my eyes out.’

‘Who the fuck is this cunt?’ said Sandor.

‘He’s -’ Arya wrestled free from Sansa and Pod, giving Sandor a look that Sansa had never seen before. A look that showed her that they _did_ have a mutual understanding, underneath it all. ‘The one from my other school.’

Sandor eyed her for a very short moment before putting the packaged ice creams down and handing his own Mr Whippy (two flakes) to Sansa. ‘Is that right.’

Joffrey was still looking as if he could swagger into a saloon bar and not care about getting shot. So utterly full of himself. Sansa felt her own quiet rage at what he had done to her sister. Arya had been drunk and stupid, but this boy was really vile.

‘You’re an athletic guy, are you?’ Sandor’s tone was almost conversational, and Sansa wondered for a confused moment whether that’s how he talked to the students who came to see him. His ice cream was beginning to dribble down her fingers but she didn’t think this was the right time to lick it.

Joffrey looked a little confused, his veneer lost for a tiny moment. ‘I _was_.’ He glared at Arya again, and his bluster returned. ‘Until this little bitch destroyed my hand. I’m trying out some other disciplines.’ He dropped his shoulder in an incredibly maddening, smug way. ‘Bloodsports are pretty diverting.’

‘Can you swim?’

Joffrey looked at Sandor with a swaggering impatience. ‘Of course I can swim,’ he said.

‘Good,’ said Sandor, grabbing him by his shirt collar and throwing him into the river, before looking at the two other boys. ‘Who’s next?’

***

**Jojen**

_Boys out on the raz._

_Smashing it!_

_Having a cheeky one, Skiddaw-styleeee_

Back in the safety of his own room, Jojen had got onto Facebook – he did have an account, just only chose to put up quotes by artists on it, to which most of his friends put insulting comments underneath – to have a look. Feeling rather seamy. He scrolled through Tommen’s most recent photos, but it looked wholesome enough, homoerotic only in the innocent sense. Outdoor boys together, ruddy-cheeked and thumbs-ups.

He messaged Tommen. _Alright lioncub. Hows it going? Getting your rocks off? x_

He stared again at the screen. He shouldn’t feel this shitty. It was just a light dalliance, he and him. A frippery. Like licking a Vanilla Magnum for several months. Or a gold-plated statue. 

_Hey all gd ta! Havin fun ☺_

Tommen normally put a kiss on there. A few kisses. Jojen clicked on the name of one of the other boys tagged in the photo and had a look at his album. He followed a chain of photos, a bunch of bastard-dull Made in Chelsea-loving lads doing their Duke of Edinburgh Award, abseiling and the like. No one would ever paint that shit. He clicked on one further photo – of Tommen kissing another guy on the cheek.

Just the cheek, he thought, clicking again, a photo of them all in some camp-hut, and Tommen in the background (you couldn’t miss that golden hair anywhere) with his arm slung round the same boy. His head on his shoulder. 

_Miss me_? he messaged, and stared at the screen. _Tommen is online._

He kept staring at his phone all the way through ‘Floating Weeds’ (Ozu, 1959), all the way through half a jar of peanut butter, all the way through his ‘trad Kyoto shizz’ playlist. _Tommen is online._

Three hours later, it finally buzzed.

_Course!_

No kiss. Jojen turned his phone off, and lay awake in the dark all night, listening to the melancholy curlings of a single Japanese wooden flute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PICSET! Linkable [here](http://i.imgur.com/vYSYB5o.jpg).
> 
> ****  
> PROFESSOR SWIMMINGFOX’S TWENTIETH-CENTURY ART CLASS!  
>   
>  Surrealism!
> 
>  
> 
> Surrealism emerged in the 1920s. Artists channelled the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination, painting unnerving scenes with often photographic precision. Disdaining rationalism and literary realism, they believed the rational mind repressed the power of the imagination. Revelations could be found on the street and in everyday life and the style remains highly influential to this day.
> 
> Salvador Dali! Max Ernst! Joan Miro! René Magritte! Leonara Carrington! Frida Kahlo! Jean Arp!
> 
>  
> 
> Superrealism!
> 
>  
> 
> Also known as Photorealism or Hyperrealism, Superrealism referred to artists who depended heavily on photographs, which they often projected onto canvas so that the painted image would be replicated with extreme accuracy. It came at the same time as Conceptual Art, Pop Art and Minimalism and favoured realism over those namby-pamby abstractionists. It engaged with Walter Benjamin’s book ‘The Work of Art In The Age of Mechnical Reproduction’ (1936) which looked to put art within the realm of the mass media. Accordingly, photorealism often features machinery and everyday objects – trucks, gumball machines, fast food restaurants and toys.
> 
> It plays with the idea of realism as the artist based their work on a photo rather than direct observation. The paintings feel distanced from reality. 
> 
> Key superrealists! Chuck Close, Audrey Flack and Richard Estes. There has been a more modern set, too, maximizing the potential of digital technology to get even more precise results. This has been coined Hyperrealism. That ice cream in the picset is painted and you can Google the most ridiculously life-like things.
> 
>  
> 
> **  
> **  
> HELPFUL BRITISH NOTES:  
>   
> 
> Gogglebox is a show in which we watch people watching the telly – they just sit on their sofas chatting to each other about particular shows as they’re on. I was skeptical and snobbish about this for quite a while until I watched it. It’s a guilty pleasure. It’s really just slice-of-life telly.
> 
> Made In Chelsea, on the other hand, is a shit ‘structured’ reality show (well, actually award-winning) which both shapes and maniuplates the reality as much as it is fly-on-the-wall. It is populated by West London rich socialite twats.
> 
> 'chav' is a pretty nasty term for the more high-street, working-class sort of folk. An American might say 'white trash.'
> 
> 'Up the duff' = preggers.
> 
> ‘Having a cheeky one’ is a back-reference to ‘cheeky Nando’s’ (see Potential), but we probably don’t need to get into all that again.
> 
> Skiddaw is one of the Lake District fells. It is actually called Skiddaw Little Man!
> 
> The Duke of Edinburgh Award is an extra-curricular achievement award that you can do as a teenager to gain extra credits for university, one’s CV and just general well-being, if you like that sort of thing. Lots of healthy outdoor shenanigans, community activities and the like.


	4. Auto-destructive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta EVER SO for the comments! They fill me with almost as much joy as staring at a giant Cy Twombly painting. Maybe MORE.

_‘Destroy a canvas and you create shapes.’ Gustav Metzger_

***

**Jojen**

It was a massive pile of shit. 

His installation. And his lovelife. The summation worked for both.

Jojen stood in the shed, staring at his artwork with a cigarette in his mouth and a large, two-pronged garden hoe hoisted onto one shoulder.

He didn’t really feel any better this morning. The worst thing was finding out about being fuckolded (he was at least pleased with his new word) in the way that he had, over bloody Facebook. It was so tawdry. If Tommen had come to him and said, ‘this isn’t working, babe. I’d prefer to suck off some horse-faced scrum-half. I find your artistry intimidating,’ then he would have graciously sent him on his way. Even without the last bit. Or if Tommen had wanted more of an open, come-one, come-all (pun intended) sort of arrangement, then that could have worked. Maybe.

He idly put the pad of one finger on the point of the hoe. Pretty sharp.

It wasn’t in doubt now. Jojen had done a bit of extra spying, feeling worse than when he had stumbled across that weird torture-porn-but-actual-porn site, and finding a few more oblique and not-so-oblique references to Tommen and his boy on Instagram and elsewhere. Jojen had begun to suspect that it might have even begun before he went away. Which meant that he hadn’t even been Tommen’s first. 

It was the blitheness of the dishonesty that he hated. Jojen could well imagine that Tommen wasn’t even feeling too guilty, larking about all rosy-cheeked, covered in mud, tasting of apples. That golden skin. He just had this merry, summery playfulness. Jojen, on the other hand, felt cheap, soiled. As if Tommen had only used him because he was properly out and proud, to get some experience before moving onto someone with the right breeding (and less of an inclination to read Baudelaire aloud). Strong teeth, glossy coat and all that.

He pressed his finger against the metal point until he felt it break the first layer of skin.

And he hated feeling so hurt. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Jojen hadn’t really done the relationship thing, just plenty of sharp encounters on street corners and bedrooms and in the pair of clubs he could get into. He hadn’t meant to have a boyfriend. 

The work in the shed was stolid, unbreathing. Tubes and snow photos and thick lumps of paint. A pile of fucking shit. Who was he kidding - he wasn’t an artist. He was a sixteen-year-old disingénue with a slightly broken heart. Well, he could carry on breaking. His crappy, artless soul, or something more tangible.

Jojen put the cigarette back in his mouth and hefted the hoe off his shoulder and in front of him. 

And began smashing. 

***

**Arya**

Madhouse. It had only taken five seconds for the Stark residence to feel like the circus had come to town.

Lysa and her crusty boyfriend had driven Sansa, Arya and Robin round, and the nine people in the house felt like twenty. Only Robb was missing, though he and Theon were returning from travelling in a few days. Several people were talking at once, and drinks were being made, and Arya had been crushed into warm cotton jumpers and breasts and arms and beards. Rickon was racing through the house, and things were already falling (and smashing) behind him. Robin looked utterly terrified, for once - for some reason, the only person in the world that flummoxed him was Rickon. Sansa was hugging their dad for the fifth time. Bran was talking calmly to Thoros, who was in that red ‘90s woven hoodie he always wore and looking like he should be in some medieval wood smoking oak leaves or some shit.

It felt weird. Nice, totally nice to see her family again, but weird too. The four of them had come back for Christmas, but apart from that, they had been away for ten months on their massive fact-finding mission round the Arctic and touring all the international global warming conferences with their now-quite-famous mantra, _Winter Isn’t Coming_. It was cool that they were doing such important work - polar bears, sea levels, flood plains – but pretty surreal to have them home.

Arya had always felt crap being the one in the middle. Robb had the benefit of being first-born, Sansa was the eldest girl and really clever, Bran had the leg thing, and Rickon was the ADHD-nutcase. She was squashed inbetween them all, trying to be heard. Occasionally wanting to destroy things.

‘Oh, my darling girl,’ said her mum for the third time, holding her cheeks between her hands like she was a dog on Crufts. ‘It’s so good to see you.’ She had dyed her hair a deeper red than normal.

‘You too,’ said Arya, through squashed cheeks. So stop fucking leaving me here, she thought.

‘She’s been doing very well,’ said Lysa, who was sucking Pimm’s off a stick of cucumber. ‘Even with the influence of _that boy_.’ 

Arya rolled her eyes. Lysa was utterly suspicious of all men except the doucheholes she went out with. Pod had gotten used to her weird glares every time he came round. Even his white chocolate coconut cake didn’t win her over (Robin had been sick after eating almost all of it).

Her mum gazed at Arya. At least she also knew that her own sister was a freaking nutjob. ‘Well, I’m very much looking forward to meeting him.’ Arya gave a thumbs-up and tried to ignore the fact that her heart was DJ-ing house-beats. He was coming round in a bit.

Bran was reading in the living room. ‘No change with you, then,’ Arya said, nodding quickly at the book in case he thought she meant his legs. 

He smiled. ‘I’ve moved on from Iain Sinclair. Got a bit bored of all the walking talk.’ Bran liked psychogeography, which seemed to be basically wandering around thinking pretentious thoughts about the place you were in and all its history. Though she was fairly sure that you could be in a wheelchair and also be a psychogeographer. She just preferred the psycho bit, personally.

Bran was looking loads older, Arya thought, even since Christmas. His face had stretched. ‘And how about all the Derren Brown shit?’ she said. He’d been very into mind-games last year, and was always trying to fox her into believing he could tell what the Lottery numbers were going to be (she’d spent all her pocket money one month) or that there were zombies coming to get her.

Bran shrugged. ‘I have a go occasionally. Mr Luwin thinks it’s distracting. Usually when I’m trying it out on him.’ He smiled at her.

‘Dude, you need _some_ distraction. And you’ve got to be better than _him_.’ She looked across the room, where Thoros was showing Rickon some magic trick, which their little brother seemed utterly unimpressed by, whilst Robin hid behind the sofa. Lysa was whispering in Catelyn’s ear as they watched Thoros, and they both laughed conspiratorially. Gross. Arya could totally hear she and the crusty having sex at night when he was round, and him shouting something about dark nights and living again, like a total fucking weirdo. 

‘Wanna come to a party later?’ she said to Bran. ‘There’ll be fit girls.’ Hopefully the wheelchair would be cute to some of them.

Her brother put his lips together in careful consideration. ‘Ok,’ he said.

The doorbell. Arya looked at it. It would be Pod. Pod was going to meet them. Right now.

Rickon answered the door and sort of growled at him. 

‘Hello,’ said Pod. He was wearing a Kraftwerk t-shirt that said ‘Man Machine’ all over it. 

Rickon whooped.

‘This is my little bro,’ said Arya. ‘One of them. The Where The Wild Things Are one.’ Rickon growled again and ran off to terrorise Robin some more.

Arya kissed Pod, just a little quick one. ‘Hey.’ 

‘Hey,’ he said, looking a bit nervous as he followed her into the house. 

‘And this is the Times Literary Supplement one,’ she said, pretending not to be nervous at all. Bran put his hand up in an understated wave. 

Her mum and dad were in the hallway suddenly, looking expectant.

‘Um, yeah. So this is Pod. Podrick. Payne.’ God, she sounded like an idiot. It wasn’t fucking Jane Austen times. She’d be curtseying next and asking for dowries.

‘Just Pod is fine,’ said Pod, giving them one of his best for-the-olds smiles, though he still looked shy (and cute-as-fuck). 

Her dad shook his hand. ‘We’ve heard a lot about you. Great to meet you.’

I haven’t told you the good stuff, thought Arya, with _sex and kissing and sex and talking through the night and getting him adorably stoned and sex_ whizzing through her head.

Pod just blushed a teeny bit. She could see how much it mattered that they liked him. 

‘I understand that you played a big part in Arya doing so much better at school,’ her dad said. 

‘Um, only a bit,’ said Pod, glancing at her with his crazy-good, full-fat eyes. ‘She did it on her own, mostly.’

‘Well, I’m very proud of the pair of you,’ said her mum, studying the two of them with a look that was shrewd and warm.

‘What’ll you have to drink?’ said her dad. ‘There’s beer in the fridge, and cider.'

‘Pimm’s o’clock, please!’ shouted Sansa from the living room. She had excellent hearing when it came to people fetching her drinks.

‘What, so he can have a drink and I can’t?’ said Arya, following them into the kitchen. 

‘Yes, Arya,’ said her mum. She still had that kind-but-firm thing nailed down.

‘I liked it better when you guys were away,’ she said, mostly a lie.

‘Ah, there’s my girl,’ said her dad, standing back up from the fridge, giving her a wink.

Arya stuck her tongue out at Pod, who looked quite relieved to have a beer put in his hand.

***

**Sansa**

‘So did you always want to be a school counsellor, Sandor?’

‘Christ to fuck, no.’ Sandor drank deeply from his cider (local, cloudy).

Sansa had managed, with great powers of persuasion (she promised to do a striptease for him incorporating his Queen of the South FC shirt), to get Sandor to come out for a pre-party drink with Meera and Jon. Actually getting him to come to the party was a step too far, but that was understandable. His exact words had been _over my cold, hard, dead fucking body_ , but of course you probably shouldn’t hang out with students you’d probably counselled at some point. Apart from Arya.

They had gone to the Apple Cider boat on the river on Meera’s suggestion, sitting at one of the tables on the cobbled quayside. Jojen’s sister was great fun, a mix of wit and keen intelligence and just the tastefully right amount of gossip. Sansa had been hanging out with her more and more now that she was home for the summer. Though she and Jon had just returned from another skiing trip – Hintertux in Austria, many photos of them togged up in matching skiwear doing nifty snowboarding moves – and both had sun-burnt cheeks and noses, thus upping their joint cuteness factor by several points.

‘I can imagine it being a very rewarding job, though,’ Jon said to Sandor, earnestly, his hands cupped round his glass (medium, clear). 

‘If you think kids blethering on about their problems all day long is rewarding, then aye, absolutely.’

Meera (dry, perry) was watching Sandor with a half-grin on her face, as if waiting for the punchline, and when one didn’t arrive, slowly chewed it away and looked at Sansa with wide eyes. ‘Is it, um, nice having the summer off at least?’ She picked out a cheesy chip from the basket they were sharing. 

‘Aye, I guess. I’m doing a bit of extra work for a friend. School counselling doesn’t pay a city boy’s bloody wages.’ Sandor looked uncomfortable, as if his clothes itched. ‘Another?’ He didn’t wait for an answer, looking relieved to have thought of something he could do to get away from the table, picking his wallet out from his back pocket as he walked to the boat, ducking to get under the doorframe.

‘He’s – wow, Sansa.’ Meera didn’t seem to know what to say. ‘He’s – he’s very big.’

‘Yes he is,’ said Sansa, rather emphatically with her own wide eyes, gulping down the last of her cider (sparkling, raspberry).

Meera spat out a little of hers as she laughed. 

Jon gazed at them both. Earnestly. ‘If I said something like that about a girl, you two would call me a misogynist.’

‘Oh, shush,’ said Meera. ‘He’s just a very large man. In height. And breadth.’ 

Sansa gave her a secret thumbs-up and they both laughed again.

Jon shook his head with a forlorn half-smile.

Sansa tapped her fingernails on her pint glass. ‘This is the first company we’ve had together, apart from his friend Bronn. He’s a bit nervous, I think.’

‘Aw,’ said Meera. ‘Well, aside from the bigness, I like him. It’s very obvious how into you he is.’

‘You think?’ said Sansa. It was hard to tell sometimes. He was always so happy, in his own rather grabby way, to see her. But there was something a little removed about him sometimes, too. His lack of keenness to hang out with anyone else for one. 

It had been so good to see everyone at home. This crazy, multi-coloured explosion of _Starks_ , even minus Robb. And Pod had come to meet the folks, and – no surprise there – passed the test with flying colours. She couldn’t help wondering what it would have been like if Sandor had been there too. 

‘Oh god, of course,’ said Meera. ‘I think if someone else tried to come onto you he’d break all their limbs.’

‘Would you like me to do that?’ said Jon to Meera. ‘If someone came onto you?’

‘No, honey,’ said Meera, resting her hand on his arm. ‘You have other skills.’

‘I could beat a man up, if I had to,’ said Jon, who was looking a little hurt. ‘I just choose to use my leadership skills instead.’

‘Because you are awesome,’ said Meera, kissing him and putting her hand in his locks. Sansa wondered what conditioner he used. His hair had a shine like oil on seabirds’ wings.

Sandor came back with four pints of variedly-coloured cider between his fingers.

‘Not going to the party, then?’ said Meera, with another impish grin.

‘I’d sooner be stabbed in the guts by several men at once,’ said Sandor, sitting down again and letting her clink his glass.

Jon looked a bit forlorn.

***

**Arya**

‘Fuck yes, motherfucker, it is party time.’ Arya rang the doorbell as Bran wheeled up to the front door next to Pod, who was holding a carrier bag with several beers. Their folks said he could come as long as they weren’t back too late.

‘Hey, you guys,’ said Missy at the door. Her folks, who had a biggish house, were away on holiday. Missy was only just finishing Year 12, but had already got two A2s in Punjabi and Mandarin. She was wearing a silver dress that made her look even hotter than normal and behind her, every boy in the hallway was gazing at her back in wonder. ‘Hey, Podrick,’ she said in a slightly softer, towel-dried voice, which Arya forgave her for, seeing as her revelation about Pod’s super-killer bed manner basically kickstarted their whole love-thing. 

Pod gave her a sheepish grin. ‘Hey.’

‘Hey, sista,’ said Arya. ‘This be my bro, Bran.’

‘Hello Bran,’ said Missy, leaning down to him. ‘Welcome to my manor. I’m really sorry, but it might be hard for you to get upstairs. But there’s a loo down here. Will you be alright?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ said Bran, looking at the ledge that added a couple of inches to the entrance. ‘I just need to get inside first.’

‘Oh shit,’ said Missy, turning round, and all the boys who had been gazing at her quickly turned to each other or looked at their drinks. ‘Grey!’

Grey came down the hall, assessing the situation very quickly. ‘Sure man, yeah, course, course. Alright, bro, how you doing?’

‘Fine, thanks,’ said Bran. ‘Sorry.’

‘No, course, man, it’s all good. What I’m here for.’ He and Pod helped Bran lift his chair over the ledge. Arya quite got off on looking at both Pod’s upper arm muscles in his t-shirt and Grey’s slimmer, darker-skinned ones. 

‘Thank you, baby,’ said Missy, putting her hands in the front pockets of Grey’s jeans and leaning him against the wall. ‘Help yourself to stuff, yeah?’ she said to Arya and the others. ‘Booze is in the kitchen.’ She started kissing Grey in a slow, soft way and the boys lined up along the hallway looked a bit miserable.

‘No underage drinking,’ said Arya, wagging her finger at her brother as people made way for them.

‘You can talk,’ said Bran, who hardly drank a thing apart from red wine at the dinner table, which he had managed to persuade their parents to give him about three times in total. 

An hour later, Arya was outside with Grey and some of his kung fu buddies, when a shadow transformed into Jojen, wandering up with a fag dangling in his fingers. 

‘ _There_ you are,’ she said, slinging her arms around his neck. 

‘Hello,’ Jojen said. His voice sounded a bit funny.

‘What’s up?’ She heard him take a breath but had already gone onto her next thought. ‘More importantly, do you have any lovely weed for me to smoke, please?’ She made kissing noises.

Jojen went a bit stiff. Coat-hanger stiff. ‘No,’ he said, and his voice sounded cold, cementy. He was obviously super-stoned already.

‘Liar. You totally do. You always do. I’ll give you some money, honest. Next time I see you. Swear down. _Pleeease_.’ She drew out the word over about seven seconds.

Jojen shrugged her arms off him with surprising force, almost pushing her. ‘Fuck off, Arya, alright?’

Her mouth dropped open. ‘Wow, Jojen.’

‘Just fuck off,’ he said, staring at her. ‘You’re just as bad as everyone else.’

‘No, I will not fuck off.’ She was utterly hurt. He actually meant it.

‘No need for harshness, bro,’ said Grey. ‘It’s all just fun and games tonight.’

Jojen was staring at them both. ‘You’re all just fucking using me all the time. Everyone’s always just fucking using me. Even you.’ The last bit addressed to Arya, in a way that made her blood chill.

‘Jojen –’ she began to say, putting her hand on his arm. 

He slung it off. ‘Seriously. Just get off me. Get off my back. The whole fucking lot of you.’ Jojen walked off, not his usual languid sloping movement but something a little jagged and unsteady. 

Arya watched him go with her mouth open and a feeling in her stomach like she had been stabbed with a very thin sword, 

‘Bit heavy,’ said Grey. ‘You alright, mate?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, meaning the exact opposite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **PICSET 1! (Most of) The Stark and co clan:**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **PICSET 2! (Almost) everyone else:**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> PLUS Bonus feature of Pod's t-shirt, which I couldn't fit into the picset:  
> 
> 
>   **  
> **  
> PROFESSOR SWIMMINGFOX’S TWENTIETH-CENTURY ART CLASS!  
>  Auto-destructive art was coined by German artist Gustav Metzger in the 1960s. Much of his work was a reaction to growing up a witness to the power of the Nazi state – he calls his art ‘to do with rejecting power.’ It is also about rejecting art’s egocentrism, erasing work that has been made rather than wallowing in commercialism and celebrity. His pretty cool and uncompromising manifesto is [here.](http://radicalart.info/destruction/metzger.html)
> 
> The Who’s Pete Townshend studied with him and was inspired to trash his guitars onstage. Japanese Noise band Hanatarash would create entire performances out of destroying their sets with power tools and with other non musical instruments, with the sound produced being the focus. I think Pod would be into them.
> 
> There are many other artists who have destroyed their work. Man Ray made a piece called ‘Object to be Destroyed.’ Others have included Yoko Ono, Gerhard Richter, and Michael Landy in the UK, who carefully catalogued all 7,000 pieces of his work before systematically destroying them. More on that [here!](https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/break-down/)
> 
>  
> 
> **  
> **  
> HELPFUL BRITISH NOTES:  
>  I don't know if Derren Brown is known over in North America or elsewhere - he's a pretty amazing mentalist and illusionist sort of guy. Very clever. 
> 
> Pimms o’clock comes from a very jolly advert on telly.
> 
> A2s are the exams you normally do in Year 13, ie when you are 17/18.
> 
> Swear down = I swear, no joke, I’m serious. 
> 
>  
> 
> **  
> **  
> PRETENTIOUS BRAN BONUS FEATURE:  
>  Psychogeography is an approach to urban geography which encourages playfulness and dreaminess! You often don't get anywhere fast. LIKE BRAN AND CO IN GoT. It links in with the current trend for mindfulness just a wee bit, with the aim of exploring cities in new ways and reaching a higher awareness of a place.


	5. Dada

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the weird glitchy double-appearance of Chapter 4 for a bit there. HERE'S THE REAL CHAPTER 5. Happy Easter, y'aaaaallll.
> 
> This chapter follows straight on from Jojen's mini-meltdown in the last one.

_‘DADA, as for it, it smells of nothing, it is nothing, nothing, nothing.’ Francis Picabia_

_‘Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.’ Edgar Degas_

_‘I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists.’ Marcel Duchamp_

***

**Jojen**

Jojen sat on a slightly damp garden chair at the edge of Missy’s patio, the house music beats from inside rattling just out of time with his heart, and a load of Dadaist nonsense poetry skittering through his brain. He had never felt quite so un-Jojen. He was used to feeling Zen, Shaolin, Buddhist, stoned. ‘Fuck,’ he whispered, and looked at both of his shaking hands.

‘Are you ok?’ A boy in a wheelchair was there beside him. As if he had appeared out of thin air.

‘Not really.’ Arya’s brother. It had to be – they had the same eyes. Darkly shining under the patio light. And it wasn’t just that. ‘I’ve seen you before,’ Jojen said.

The boy frowned, but in the most subtle of ways. ‘I don’t think so.’

No, thought Jojen. In my green dreams. It had not been Tommen. Or himself. ‘I’m Jojen,’ he said, and held his hand out.

‘Bran.’ He shook it, with a gently firm grip.

‘I know.’ Jojen went to light a cigarette again, and his hands were shaking. Again.

Bran was watching him. ‘Do you want help with that?’

‘I’ll manage. Parkinson’s hasn’t quite set in.’ He looked hard at his hand, willed it to stay still, and lit his fag. 

Bran was watching him in an owlish sort of way. Wise, but as if could pick him up by his talons if he wanted to. ‘You know Arya,’ he said.

‘Yeah.’ Though he’d just bitched her out like a five-year-old having a tantrum. Jojen eyed his tremulous hand again. 

‘Are you sure you’re ok?’

Jojen looked across at him. ‘I had a boyfriend and I think that maybe I don’t anymore.’ He could do that much at least – he wasn’t a doormat. That was it. No more Golden Delicious for Jojen.

Apart from a slight widening of the eyes, Bran didn’t look very ruffled. He nodded, quite solemnly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and his voice was light and full of something strong, somehow.

He likes boys, Jojen thought. He could see it. Sense it. He always could, even if they weren’t the sort to be into him or vice versa. He always knew. ‘No need for you to be sorry,’ he said, taking another deep, fortifying drag from his fag before leaning back and crossing his arms. ‘I’ll live.’ He looked across at Bran. ‘Been travelling, right?’

‘Yeah.’ Bran told him about South and Central America, lessons with his homeschool teacher Mr Luwin, and their weeks on the expedition boat in the Norwegian Arctic. He had a thick paint-swipe of eyebrow and quite delicate features – a bone china face, the china you’d get in a Japanese tea-set. In fact, he looked slightly Japanese, which meant Jojen only wanted to surreptitiously study him even more, seeing as most of his future fantasies involved living in Tokyo and enjoying a tea ceremony whilst being given a blowjob by an exceedingly cute Japanese boy.

‘Have you been to Japan?’ said Jojen.

‘No. Why?’

Jojen shrugged. ‘I just like it. I want to live there.’

‘You will one day,’ said Bran, gazing into the garden, where a girl was shrieking with laughter having half-fallen into the pond.

‘Yeah?’ said Jojen, wondering how he could be so sure.

‘Yeah,’ said Bran, looking very sure indeed.

***

**Arya**

Sansa was too old to be at this party. But she didn’t seem to care, dancing with everyone, merrily chatting away to people two or more years younger than her and shrieking uproariously at some crap that a boy was saying. Not realising how much he was eyeing her up – or maybe she did, and got off on it.

Arya sat in Missy’s living room, watching her sister sashay around pouring everyone tequila, and feeling like total shit.

‘Hey,’ said Pod, coming and squashing next to Arya on the armchair. She put her head in the soft cushiony bit between his neck and his shoulder and thought about hibernating there for about a thousand years. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said, or slightly shouted, over the music.

‘Jojen hates me,’ she said, into his t-shirt. ‘I’ve fucked up.’ 

‘What?’ he said, more softly, putting his arm around her. 

‘Girl, you are _smokin'_.’ Sansa pointed her fingers to Missy as she came back into the living room, walking backwards.

‘You too, babe,’ said Missy from the kitchen.

Sansa came and sat next to Pod on the arm of the chair. ‘Hello, babies.’ She put her arm around Pod and her hand in Arya’s hair. Ruffled it. 

‘Get off,’ said Arya.

‘She’s a bit upset,’ said Pod to Sansa, quietly. 

‘What? Why?’ 

‘Jojen,’ said Arya, in an even more muffled way. ‘Hates me. Fucked up.’

‘That’s insane. You guys are besties.’

‘Not any more.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing.’ Nothing, nothing, nothing. That’s what she felt like. A whole big pile of crap, useless nothing.

There was a pause. ‘He looks ok. He’s talking to Bran. Look.’

Arya lifted her head. She felt hungover and on a comedown and feverish all at once. Through the half-reflected light of the patio doors, she could see Jojen sitting outside under the big umbrella thing, chatting quietly and intensely to her brother. Probably telling him what a stupid bitch his sister was. Sucking pretty hard on his cigarette. 

The three of them sat watching the two boys and the smoke curling up between them.

‘Do you think that Bran –’ Sansa said.

‘Bran what?’ said Arya morosely. 

Sansa didn’t say anything, gazing with a soft curiosity at their little brother.

Arya looked over at them again. ‘No way.’ 

‘I don’t know,’ said Sansa.

‘No _way_ ,’ said Arya, getting a little bit of her spark back. ‘Really?’ She stared over at them. ‘That’s insane. And Jojen’s just –’ she was about to say that he was always nice to everyone. Which he was, until about ten minutes ago. She had blown it, somehow. ‘You really think that Bran is – you think he’s gay?’

‘I’m not sure I really did until now, but – yes.’

‘Just because he’s quiet and likes books and shit doesn’t mean he’s gay. God, Sansa, you’re so stereotyping.’

Sansa wiggled her hips and Pod shifted over so that the two sisters were basically sitting on his lap with their arms round him. ‘I bet you a million quid that they will get together.’

‘I haven’t got a million quid. Bet me something else. And he’s with Tommen, anyway.’

‘If I’m right, you have to hug Sandor. And tell him that you like him. And are grateful for everything that he did for you. If I’m not, I will tell Thoros that he is crazy-sexy and ask him to do a magic trick using only his penis.’ 

She was just trying to cheer Arya up. But it worked. Arya laughed, a little one, before resting her head on Pod’s chest. ‘Totally done. You are so busted.’

***

**Jojen**

Jojen stood, wobbling slightly, waiting for the bus, staring very intensely at the Lucozade-glow of the streetlight. A third little vodka bottle tucked in his pocket, donated by Missy, who had this whole sort of sexy-linguist-nursemaid thing going on. He may have told her that if his proclivities had lain elsewhere, he would have challenged to Grey to a duel. He couldn’t quite remember.

Streetlights were art, if you wanted them to be. And bus stops. And road markings. And parties. Everything was, if you put your own frame round it. He tried not to think about the carnage he’d left in the shed. 

Party. Yes. He’d been shit to Arya. Needed to sort that. He’d met her brother. Her brother had been nice. Very nice. He had talked about Jorge Luis Borges and ley lines.

A found object. 

Jojen looked at his watch. No bus. Looked at the bus stop sign. No buses ‘til morning. The buses had left him. Like Tommen. 

He walked home, a long, weaving line, leaving a trail of Jojen-thoughts behind him, naming everything art.

***

**Sansa**

Sansa woke up with a scratchy throat and a thick head. She made a sound like an unhappy frog.

‘Morning,’ said Sandor next to her. He had his reading glasses on, which made him look very cute, and was reading his latest SF novel, which had been turned into the creepiest movie ever with Scarlett Johanssen. ‘You’ve been out for ages.’

'I'm a bit ill,’ she said, blinking stodgily at him. 

He closed his book but kept his thumb in the page. 'What's up with you? Too many beers with the playschoolers?'

'Just gross.’ She rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. 

'Do you want a hot toddy?'

She turned her head to him. 'I'm not really up to it right now.'

He looked confused. 'Why not?'

'Because I said. I'm ill.'

He gazed at her quite bemusedly for several seconds. 'Do you not know what a hot toddy is?'

'I can guess.' She was starting to feel a little put out at his lack of sensitivity to her extreme yukkyness.

'It's a drink, you daft woman. Whisky and hot water and lemon and what-have-yous.’

'Oh.' She bit her lip and looked at him.

His smile was treacle-dark. 'You've a filthy mind.'

She put the duvet over her head. ‘I’m an idiot.’

‘I’m glad it’s not just me who’s got it on the brain.’ 

Sansa made an embarrassed half-groan noise from under the duvet.

‘Alright. Sit tight, then.’ He shifted out of bed.

She lay breathing in the fuggy air underneath the covers. They did have quite a lot of sex. In fact, they’d never met up and it not ended up with them all over each other, including last night, when she had admittedly been quite tequila-merry and pushed _him_ against the wall and licked him like a Lemon Calippo (she had to pick quite a few hairs off her tongue). 

Although things were starting to become a bit more cosy. The other night she’d agreed to watch a midweek Match of the Day with him as long as he massaged her shoulders for the entire first match highlights, and he had dug into her with her ridiculously strong thumbs and she moaned so much that by the time Alan Hansen had started droning on, she was sitting on top of him on the sofa, most of their clothes still on, putting her hand over his eyes to stop him watching the telly. OK, so it had turned into sex again. But sex with Sandor was often hilarious, and loud, and didn’t shy away from impracticality. It was such fun.

Sandor came back in. ‘Right, you. A Scottish remedy. Minus the whisky.’

He pulled back the covers and she shivered. ‘Can I have a t-shirt, please?’ she said. 

‘Normally I would say no way in hell, but seeing as you’re peaky.’ He set the glass down and rifled around in a drawer. Chucked one over. It was super-soft and had possibly been slung back in the drawer rather than the slightly saggy laundry basket in the corner where it should probably have headed. Sandor just stared at her as she shuffled into it, shrugging the famous Rolling Stones image of big pouty lips over her head. ‘Jesus fucking wept,’ he said. ‘It’s like a test of strength.’

She thunked back down onto the bed, feeling extremely unsexy, even though it was rather nice that he still thought she rocked it. But then, he seemed to find her attractive in anything – he once put her over the bathroom sink after walking in to find her brushing her teeth in his slightly matted dressing gown. She rather suspected she could wear a boilersuit or a clown costume and he’d react in exactly the same way.

He sat down. ‘Drink up, then.’

She shuffled up a little way and sipped. It was very heavy on the lemon and the honey. And something else. ‘Cinnamon?’

‘Cloves.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘Hope it’s not out of date. Last time I used that was about three years ago.’

‘It’s lovely.’ She hunkered down, clutching her glass, and looked at him. He was just in boxer shorts, the slightly unfashionable kind - he seemed to find the summer crazily hot, even though it was going to reach about 23 degrees this week. Maybe she would eventually coax him into Calvin Klein-esque cotton ones, but she rather liked his quirks. Those, and the thin-rimmed Specsavers glasses which were entirely unlike Petyr’s vastly expensive designer kinds (he alternated between three almost identical thick black frames). 

Sansa sighed. He was always spoiling her rotten with toast and tea in bed, and now he’d gone one step further. 'How did you not have a girlfriend already?'

His shoulders went rigid. 'I don't do girlfriends,’ he said, in quite a flat voice.

'Oh.’ That was not what she was expecting. She felt a dull little thud in her chest. Not at all. ‘Why?' she said, a little more carefully.

'I just –’ he ran his fingers over his forehead, as if _he_ had the headache. ‘Never –’ his whole posture changed from sleepy relaxed Sandor to something more tense. As if he was in a police interview. ‘It's not been my –' he glared at the floor.

The realisation came as slowly to her as the hot toddy that was opening her airwaves. 'You haven't had a girlfriend before?' She tried to keep the incredulity out of her voice. It seemed insane.

He looked irritable, like a swarm of midges was swarming over his head. 'I've had dates, sometimes more than one, and one-nighters. It's not my thing, alright?'

The words were swirling in her brain. _I don’t do girlfriends_. 'What's – what do you call what we are, then?' she said. 

'I know what this is.' He said it quite simply, almost reassuringly.

‘Go on.’ Sansa was beginning to feel a burning sensation in her stomach. ‘Tell me.' A quiet, almost-fury in her voice.

Sandor glanced at her with a dash of puzzlement at her tone. 'It's your summer, you know.’ He waved a hand in the air. ‘Thing.'

Sansa put the glass down carefully, before she threw hot lemon water in his face. He thought she was still using him. He didn’t even mind. He was happy to have a no-strings-attached fling. 'Is that what you think?'

He shrugged, looking a little confused. 'Aye.'

Sansa pushed the duvet away with her legs and got up, reeling slightly. Pulled the t-shirt down over her arse.

He was still sitting on the bed, hands folded between his knees. 'Where're you going?'

She began collecting up her clothes, pulling her jeans on. Not looking at him. 'Home.' 

'You're not well. Get back to bed. I’ll take you back in a bit.'

She went to the corner for her bag. 'No.'

'What's come over you?' He sounded more irritable now. Probably the way he talked to his unstable charges at Casterley Academy.

She whipped round to him. 'I'm not your – _fuck-buddy_. If that's what you want then I'm not doing it.' 

‘Alright, firecracker, calm down.’

That nickname again. Surely you only started doling out nicknames if you actually cared about the person? She folded her arms. ‘For a school counsellor, you are really bloody dense. You must be terrible at it. How can you do that job if you can’t even see what’s in front of you? What I want?’

He just stared at her. There was a sliver of a second when his face may have changed to something nearer confusion, or realisation, but she didn’t give him the chance. She had already turned around.

She stormed down the stairs, and slammed the door behind her, once, then twice, as the stupid thing got stuck. Realised she was still wearing his t-shirt and no bra, which she had probably left hooked over his mirror. She stomped off to the bus stop, sat moodily on the bus, stomped home from the bus stop, and was about to unlock Lysa’s front door when it opened and Arya stared at her. Looking horrified, and furious, and like she might possibly cry a little.

‘Arya? What is it? What’s wrong?’

Her sister was holding her phone in her hand. 

‘Is it Pod?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s Robin.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **PICSET INNIT.**
> 
> **  
>  PROFESSOR SWIMMINGFOX’S GUIDE TO TWENTIETH-CENTURY ART!  
>  **
> 
> The massively influential Dada movement was the first conceptual art movement where the focus of the artists was not on crafting aesthetically pleasing objects but on making works that challenged bourgeois sensibilities.
> 
> Dada artists were known for their use of readymade objects - everyday objects that could be bought and presented as art with little manipulation by the artist. Marcel Duchamp’s urinal being of course the most famous example. The use of the readymade forced questions about artistic creativity and the very definition of art and its purpose in society. 
> 
> Activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals. Dada (the term itself intended to be nonsensical) included art, sculpture, poetry and sound. The movement influenced later styles like the avant-garde and downtown music movements, and groups including surrealism, Nouveau Réalisme, pop art and Fluxus.
> 
> I was part of a big Dada-inspired thing at university, where after the show, we all appeared outside with banners protesting against the art we had just made. Arf.
> 
> Key Dadaists! Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Hannah Hoch, Hans Arp and Kurt Schwitters, whose seminal sound-poetry work ‘Ursonate’ you can [hear here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X7E2i0KMqM) to get an idea of what was going on in Jojen's head at the beginning of the chapter.
> 
> **  
>  HELPFUL BRITISH NOTES:  
>  **
> 
> Fag = cigarette, naturally.
> 
> Lucozade = really lurid-coloured energy drink. Almost as lurid as Irn-Bru!
> 
> Peaky = sick, unwell. [Here are some other excellent British words for illness!](http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2014/03/10-british-words-illness)
> 
> **  
>  PRETENTIOUS BRAN BONUS FEATURE:  
>  **
> 
> Jorge Luis Borges (Hor-heh Loois Bor-hehs) was a highly influential Argentinian poet, short-story writer, essayist and translator. He was a founder of post-modernist literature, influenced by the likes of Kafka and Poe but making his own rather mind-warping metafictions very much of his own unique style. Mr Swimmingfox is mad about Borges. Here’s one of his most famous stories, [The Library of Babel](http://hyperdiscordia.crywalt.com/library_of_babel.html)


	6. Cubism

_‘Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.’ Pablo Picasso_

_‘Cubism is like standing at a certain point on a mountain and looking around. If you go higher, things will look different; if you go lower, again they will look different. It is a point of view.’ Jacques Lipchitz_

_‘Art isn’t everything. It’s just about everything.’ Gertrude Stein_

***

**Sansa**

Robin was lying in a hospital bed, pale facepaint on his face and little plus-signs in black under each eye. He had a significant cut on his lip and his cheek seemed to have swelled. And his arm was in a sling. ‘I made the ultimate sacrifice,’ he said, both grandly and weakly.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Arya.

‘Language,’ said Lysa, sitting very close to Robin’s bedside, looking very tired.

‘It was an act of love.’

‘What was, Robin?’ said Sansa, sitting on the other side of their cousin. She and Arya had got Thoros to give them a lift to the hospital, where they had found Lysa screeching to the nurses about Robin only being able to drink whole milk.

‘My play,’ he said, blinking rather affectedly.

‘What play?’

‘I wrote a one-act monologue for her,’ he said, as if it was quite obvious. ‘For Shireen. I wanted the world to know the depth of my ardour and so I performed it out on the street outside after drama class had finished. It also had mime. And contemporary dance.’

‘Holy shit,’ said Arya. 

‘ _Language_ ,’ said Lysa, simultaneously giving Sansa, in Sandor’s slightly musty oversized Rolling Stones t-shirt, a frank up-and-down look.

‘This is crazy, man,’ said Thoros, coming back in with a tray of hot chocolates in very thin brown cups. ‘Kids. It’s not like it was.’ Everything had been a lot better in the early ‘90s, according to Thoros.

‘And – she didn’t like it? Shireen?’ said Sansa, glancing confusedly at Arya. She felt shit about what had happened with Sandor and she wasn’t wearing a bra and her throat felt gross, but now was not really the time. She took a cup from the tray and scalded her fingers. ‘Ow.’

‘I don’t know what she thought,’ said Robin, dreamily. Or perhaps it was the painkillers making him woozy. ‘Two of the boys who don’t like me are in drama class too, and they showed their feelings for my play in quite a physical way.’

‘By beating the shit out of you,’ said Arya, standing up. ‘The ones from before, Robin?’ Her hands were in fists.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They prefer more realism.’ He gazed at the ceiling. ‘I think maybe it was a bit too avant-garde for them.’

‘Our bodies are heroes, Robin,’ said Thoros, with his psychedelic Glastonbury-style wisdom. He was quite sweet really, if ridiculously chilled-out. ‘They always grow back, stronger than before.’

Robin nodded solemnly before wincing in pain. ‘ _My arm has bro-ken_ ,’ he sang, timorously, to the tune of ‘Morning Has Broken.’ ‘ _Like the first a-aarm_.’ Lysa brought his glass of milk and straw to his mouth.

‘They fucking broke his _arm_?’ said Arya.

‘It’s fractured,’ said Lysa. ‘He fell off a wall trying to get away from them.’

‘Where are you going?’ said Sansa to Arya, who was already at the door. 

‘Nowhere,’ said Arya. ‘Actually, can I borrow your phone for a sec?’

***

**Arya**

She wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to do. Kids didn’t get done in the same way as adults for GBH – she knew that pretty well herself, from having smashed in Joffrey’s hand and gotten away with it. But those little fucks needed to be told. Not just by having their podgy little knuckles rapped and getting a talking to from the police, which is what had already happened.

Obviously her own threats two months ago hadn’t been enough. She was getting pretty badass at fencing these days, what with Syrian-Syrio yelling at her every week, but she just wasn’t physically threatening. But she knew someone who was.

‘Hello, shitbreath,’ she said into her phone, outside the hospital. 

There was a short pause. ‘How the fuck did you get my number?’ Sandor said, on the other end of the line.

‘How do you think, idiot?’

There was a longer pause. ‘She give it to you?’

‘No, I just got it.’

‘What do you want?’ He sounded quite wary.

‘Um. Your help.’

A ten-second pause. ‘You know I’m not on duty over the summer, right?’

‘Not for me. I –’ she almost said _need your body_ and let out a small, hysterical laugh. She was really hungover from yesterday's party. ‘You know how you’re big and scary as shit?’

There was a long sigh. ‘Does this phone call have a fucking point or can I hang up now?’

‘Robin, our cousin. He got beaten up by these kids who’ve been bullying him at school. He’s in hospital. I just need someone to scare the shit out of them for me.’

A fifteen-second pause. ‘He alright?’

‘Yeah. Bit broken. He’ll mend. But – it’s not cool. I tried to sort it before myself, but –’

‘I can’t fucking beat up children, you know.’

‘I’m not saying you have to beat anyone up. Just – look like you could, if you wanted to.’ Arya waited. Counted the seconds.

***

**Jojen**

‘Hey, brother.’

Jojen was sitting on one of the garden chairs in his back garden, reading ‘Aesthetic Order: A Philosophy of Order, Beauty and Art’ and drinking a black coffee. In fact, he was a study in black – jeans, worn cotton t-shirt, shades, soul. Perhaps the last one was a bit melodramatic, but he didn’t feel marvellously well after yesterday. ‘Hey,’ he said to Meera, who had come to sit next to him.

‘So you got a bit angry with your art, huh?’ She drew her knees up and nodded towards the bottom of the garden.

He gazed at the shed door, which was hanging from its top hinge. Howland had not yet seen the damage. Jojen would probably have to do a bit of extra telesales work to pay for that one (he was doing two days a week over the summer, and spent most of his time telling callers about the framing devices in Truffaut’s early work, or the influence of Cubism on Futurism). 

‘Mmm,’ he said. 

‘Seems a bit of a shame to have destroyed it all, though. Can you re-use any of it?’

He should probably just display the shed in all its trashed-up glory. But that seemed clichéd. It had been done. And, after everything, the word _re-used_ made him feel a bit sick (though that might have been Missy’s vodka). 

‘Nah,’ he said, and stretched slightly. 

Meera was watching him. ‘Bit down?’

‘Mmm,’ he said. 

‘Tommen? Did something happen?’

‘Yep.’ He took another sip of his scalding hot coffee. Some artists would really work with that, the whole being-used thing. Look it right in the face.

‘Sorry, brother.’ She put her face up to the weak, watery sun. ‘Want to come to the Watershed with me and Jon?’

‘To see what?’ Being used. Maybe there was something in that.

‘Everest. Jon’s seen it once already but not in 3-D.’ 

‘Alright,’ he said, his mind already flâneuring elsewhere. 

***

**Sansa**

Sansa had made Robin mashed potato and cheese and baked beans as he’d requested and was sitting on the sofa watching his favourite film, ‘The Princess Bride’, with him. To be honest, it was one of her favourites, too, and comfort-telly was just as good for her right now. She still felt pretty horrible, both in throat, head, heart and mind. 

Robin had his arm in a proper cast now, having just spent one afternoon in hospital being cooed over by very patient nurses who tolerated his singing and tributary odes with admirable gusto. Sansa was totally going to join the next ‘Save the NHS’ march. Arya had done a pretty impressive drawing on his arm of Robin throwing his two bullies from some floor-door in a high mountain castle. Sansa had just scrawled hearts and kisses, and Robin had said (rather optimistically) to leave a space in case Shireen wanted to draw anything. It wasn’t quite clear whether they had actually spoken yet. 

Now that her folks were back, she should moving her stuff over there – Arya had begun to, but their cousin needed some TLC whilst Lysa was working. ‘Eat up,’ Sansa said. ‘You’ve got Pod’s get-better brownies next.’

‘Yay,’ said Robin, quite weakly. He’d spent the morning listening to Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks on repeat and sighing, quite heavily.

Sansa sneaked another look at the messages that had been sent to her over the last one and a half days.

_Hey._

_Would be good to talk._

Then nothing. Although, seeing as she hadn’t replied to them, that was fair enough. She couldn’t imagine Sandor begging on his hands and knees. He was a little bit proud. And perhaps she was too. But the last thing she wanted was to be used again – Petyr had done that enough with her, fucking her to his heart’s and groin’s content (and hers, up to a point, to be honest), before tossing her aside for the next one.

She was embarrassed about storming out of Sandor’s house like that, but only a bit. If that was how he saw their relationship – too grand a word, in that case – then she had to be strong and knock it on the head.

‘Oh, Robin,’ Sansa said, in a sigh, as on the screen, Buttercup realised that the Dread Pirate Roberts was in fact Westley.

‘I know,’ said Robin, leaning his head on her shoulder. ‘Love is very testing.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, it is.’

***

**Arya**

‘Well, that was awesome fun.’ Arya and Sandor were walking into town, following a day of solo ninja tracking skills that had finally led her to both Robin-bullying boys after their football club and another quick call to the muscle in the operation.

‘I’m going to get fucking arrested,’ said Sandor. Arya had introduced them to him. Except she had called him Robin’s uncle and national Scottish wrestler. He had towered over them and given them a right proper talking to, plenty of swearing and his deepest, quietest voice. It probably all stayed the right side of legal.

‘You can’t get arrested for saying shit.’ And lifting them two feet off the ground by their collars, one in each hand, which he did after they shouted _fried face scumbag_ at him. 

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then why did you? Help me?’

‘I don’t like bullies. I’ll not have kids hurt like that.’ He sighed. ‘You’ve got to teach that boy to stand up for himself. And stop with the flouncy acting stuff. He’s bloody asking for it.’

‘Pod’s offered to teach him judo.’

Sandor almost laughed. ‘That I’d like to see. On second thoughts, scratch that.’

Arya’s stomach was grumbling. She glanced up the high street. ‘Wanna buy me a Maccy D’s?’

‘Not really.’

‘Go on. Then I won’t tell Sansa what you just did.’

He glared at her. ‘Don’t even fucking – what are you like? For god’s sake.’ But he didn’t stay angry. Instead, he gazed ahead of him, his face going all blank and saggy. Almost as mournful as Meera’s puppydog boyfriend Jon. 

‘What?’ she said.

He stopped and eyed his feet. ‘Don’t think she’s talking to me anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’ All Sansa ever did was talk _about him_. And blatantly when she was talking about him, she was actually thinking about _doing_ him, which was gag-making and made Arya want to cut off her own head to get rid of that mental picture. Although she had been a bit quiet the last day or so – but Arya had put that down to her scratchy throat. Her sister had been downing Berocca drinks and sitting under a duvet with Robin, who frankly had never looked happier.

Sandor was tapping his fingers on his thighs and looking sidelong at her. He glanced up at the McDonald’s sign.

Four minutes later, he had eaten most of her super-sized fries. ‘You could have just got your own, you know,’ she said.

He waved at her Big Mac. ‘Left you that.’ As if he’d granted her a massive favour.

She picked it up. ‘What’s up with you and Sansa, then?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Arya said rolling her eyes and opening her mouth extremely wide to cram in quite a lot of burger. 

‘No, I mean, _nothing_. Think I fucked it up a bit there.’

Totally no surprise, she thought, but thankfully she had so much burger in her gob that she couldn’t speak. 

He had an elbow on the table and ran his hand over the back of his head, sighing very loudly. 

‘Fucked up how?’ said Arya and the burger.

Sandor looked like he mostly wanted to shove the coke-straw up his nose and into his brain rather than answer her. He looked at the table. Scratched his forehead. “I think I thought – but I guess I didn’t –’ He thunked his forearms down on the table. ‘Because she –’ 

‘Say the words one at a time,’ said Arya and some seeded bun. ‘In the right order.’

He shook his head at the entire world. ‘I think she thinks more of me than I thought,’ he said. ‘Thought it was just a wee bit of fun for her. I said as much and she’s not spoken to me since.’ He breathed out, as if he’d just walked between the two bits of Tower Bridge on a tightrope and reached the other side in one piece.

‘What about you?’ said Arya plus half a gerkin. ‘Is it just a bit of fun for you?’

He stared at his hands. For about five thousand years. Glanced up at Arya.

Arya picked a sesame seed out of her teeth. ‘Well, it’s not like I’ve spoken to her about it exactly, but she doesn’t fucking talk about anything else.’ 

His expression remained almost completely the same, apart from the tiniest bit of mustardy-coloured hope in his eyes.

‘And she’s Sansa, so she doesn’t _do_ that shit. She might say she does and sure, after that douche-hole Penis Whatshisface she totally went out to pull a random guy, and for some disgusting reason that was you, but she’s all like, Sandor and me this, Sandor and me that, bla bla bla. She doesn’t do the no strings thing. She’s all about strings.’ Arya made loud puking noises, complemented with graphically demonstrative actions.

‘You’re such a bloody hypocrite,’ he said.

‘Don’t know what you mean,’ said Arya, giving him her best poker face. He shook his head at her, sighing. ‘Just tell her how you feel, you big fucking dickhead. She’s not going to cockblock you.’

He shifted about, restless and looking a bit beaten up. 

‘That’ll be fifty quid,’ Arya said. He looked at her. ‘For the counselling session.’

‘You cheeky little shit. I’ll get you some more fries.’

‘Deal,’ she said.

***

**Jojen**

Jojen stood outside the door of the Stark house. He’d never been here before. Arya had been living with The Batty Aunt since he’d known her. He’d got so used to wandering over that way that he’d gone there first, and Lysa sent him on his way, with the sound of dreadful new age-ish yoga music on in the background and the dude she was dating chanting something, while she looked, frankly, slightly stoned.

Bran answered the door. ‘Hello.’ 

Jojen’s heart did a tiny little taiko drumbeat. Today Bran was wearing glasses, black rectangular frames that (Jojen was a little mortified at his reinforcement of a terrible cliché) made him look calmly intellectual. ‘Hello,’ he said back. He felt very tall. He wondered how tall Bran would be if he was standing up, and simultaneously made a vow never to ask him that question. ‘Is your sister about?’

Bran reversed back to let him in. He was pretty swift with the wheels. Arya had spoken of two years of physiotherapy sessions. They clearly hadn’t got him very far yet. ‘She’s up there.’

Jojen began to take the stairs two at a time (he could do three without a problem), before he slowed down, realising that Bran’s eyes were still on him and that his litheness might be a bit of a punch in the face. Or, Jojen thought with a little more optimism, he could just be checking out his arse. 

Arya’s bedroom was a bit bare compared to her room at Lysa’s, and there were half-opened bags of clothes and graphic novels everywhere. She had her headphones on and was drawing. She took them off quite slowly when he popped his head round the door. ‘Hey.’ Her voice was a bit careful, flat.

‘Hey.’ Jojen put his hands in his pockets and leant his shoulder on the doorframe. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Partied out a bit. I puked my guts up yesterday morning.’ She eyed him. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m ok,’ he said, and pushed himself off. ‘I’m really sorry, Arya. I was well out of order.’

She just watched him.

He looked at the floor and back up at her. ‘Tommen’s been dicking around, I think.’

‘Oh, fuck,’ said Arya. ‘That sucks.’ 

‘I smashed up all my work in the shed.’

‘Oh, fuck,’ she said again. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, don’t be. Honest. I’m – I won’t do that again. Speak to you like that, I mean. It wasn’t cool.’

Arya bit on her thumbnail and eyed it. ‘It’s ok. You should have told me.’

‘I know.’ He shut one eye and looked at her. 

Arya stood up and walked over to him. ‘Dickhead.’ Hugged him. 

Jojen felt a little like crying. He really needed to stop smoking so much. 

‘I’m sorry I asked for weed,’ she said into his shoulder. ‘I know I do all the time.’

He pulled back. ‘It’s fine. I’m happy to. I was just being a dick.’ He loved Arya, in all her pretend-dumb, actually-clever ways. With her sword-pens and her snagged tights and ridiculous laugh and Undying, Fiercely Secret Love of Pod. If she was a boy – if she was a boy, they’d still just be besties, he thought.

‘Want me to fuck up Tommen?’ she said, her arms still around his waist.

‘No. We’ll leave him be.’

‘You sure? I can lay some mines in the rugby field or something.’

‘It’s ok. I’m going to do an exhibit tomorrow. At mine. Will you come?’

She looked puzzled. ‘But you said you smashed it up.’

‘I’m going to make something else,’ he said, with over half an inkling of what he might do already. 

‘Overnight?’ she said, her eyebrows arm-wrestling. 

‘Nothing like a challenge,’ he said.

‘Of course I’ll be there. I’ll sell tickets and do the pap-snaps and whoop and holler,’ she said.

Jojen kissed her on the cheek. ‘Thank you. Got to dash.’

Downstairs, Bran was at the dining room table, drinking what looked like cold pea soup and reading a book. Jojen had a sudden deconstructed image of him, of green and water and trees and table and words.

Bran lifted his head as Jojen ambled over. ‘It’s guanabana,’ he said, seeing Jojen eyeing his glass. ‘I got a bit addicted to them in Guatemala.’

Jojen craned his head to see what he was reading. 

Bran lifted it up to show him the cover. ‘Gertrude Stein,’ he said. ‘I’m a bit addicted to her at the moment, too.’

Jojen wasn’t entirely sure if Bran was real. It didn’t seem quite possible. ‘I’m exhibiting something tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Will you come?’

Bran looked at him. His eyes were like tree-bark and moss. ‘Of course,’ he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **PICSET.**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  **PROFESSOR SWIMMINGFOX'S 20th CENTURY ART CLASS** :
> 
>  
> 
> Cubism!
> 
>  
> 
> Cubism revolutionised European painting and sculpture in the early 20th-century by portraying a subject from many viewpoints rather than just one. Objects were analysed, broken up and reassembled in a more abstract form. Background blended into foreground and objects were shown from many different angles at once. Picasso was highly influenced by non-Western art styles which had an abstract or simplified representation of a form. Futurism, Suprematism, Dada and Constructivism developed in response to Cubism.
> 
> It inspired related movements in music (such as some Stravinsky), literature (such as Gertrude Stein) and architecture.
> 
> Picasso! Of COURSE. Plus Georges Braques.
> 
>  
> 
> **NOTES**
> 
>  
> 
> To flâneur = a French word really but used in English, and which means to stroll, lounge, saunter or loaf, which Jojen right there. It’s a bit psychogeographic. 
> 
> NHS = National Health Service, eg all that is good and right about Britain, though it is under threat.
> 
>  
> 
> **  
>  PRETENTIOUS BRAN BONUS FEATURE:  
>  **
> 
>  
> 
> Gertrude Stein – an awesome writer! I have this idea that Bran is into a faux-naif style. Stein was an American novelist, poet and playwright, and a pioneer of literary modernism. Her poems were often written in a repetitive, sound-poetry-like style (eg ‘Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose’) and she experimented with stream-of-consciousness writing and rhythm. She was also a highly keen contemporary art collector, and with her brother bought Van Gogh’s ‘The Sunflowers,’ plus Matisse, Picasso and Cezanne among others.


	7. Conceptualism

_'Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind.' Damien Hirst_

_'Ideas alone can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.' Sol Lewitt_

***

**Arya**

Results day. Arya stared at her bedroom window, a square of light just beginning to appear. She’d been awake since 3.30am, listening to her stomach growl and her head tell her that she was going to get a load of fucktard marks and have to retake them all. Because she was Arya, the one in the middle, the one with shit for brains.

A few hours later, she stared at the paper in her hands in the school grounds.

‘Arya?’ said Pod, quite gently. He’d taken the morning off work to come with her. 

She felt sort of angry, and gross, and elated. ‘Yeah. It’s all good.’ She turned them round, too sick to actually tell him. Five As, four Bs and a C – she was never going to get any more than that in Maths. Fuck Maths.

He gazed at them, and without moving a muscle, up at her. ‘I’m proud of you.’

She felt like throwing up. Blinked it away. ‘I owe you bigtime.’ Even after he’d officially stopped tutoring her and they’d very officially started shagging, he’d helped her with every subject except art over the last few months. Even though he had his own shit to do. And egg-jobs. 

He just raised his eyebrows a couple of millimetres and shook his head.

Behind them, there were the sounds of other Year 11s squealing, whooping or swearing. Many selfies featuring exam board certificates and gurning faces would appear all over social media for the next few hours. 

‘I can pay you back,’ Arya said to Pod.

‘You don’t have to pay me back.’

‘In drawings and sex.’

‘Oh, well, in that case.’ He grinned at her.

‘Wazzzaaaahhh,’ said Pyp, jumping on her from behind. ‘Only got two Ds. The rest, like, up in the gods basically, man. Sick as.’ He looked over at her results. ‘Brap brap gyaaaal,’ he said, doing a flicking, quick movement with his fingers before disappearing again. 

They began to walk to his moped. Pod had promised her celebration brunch no matter what she got before they headed to Jojen’s to see his masterpiece. Arya watched him sidelong, her nose screwed up a little. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘How do you mean?’ Pod said.

‘In a sexy way. What do you want to do? I’ll do whatever you like.’

‘I like whatever you like.’

‘Liar.’ She dug him in the ribs and he squirmed away, laughing.

‘I’m not lying.’

‘Seriously, though. Tell me what you would like. I am thinking of the most disgusting things right now, so you can’t shock me. I am unshockable.’ 

He was still smiling, shaking his head at her, blushing as he picked up his helmet. He took a breath. Leant down and whispered in her ear. 

Arya stood very still as she listened. ‘Awesome,’ she said. 

***

**Sansa**

‘He’ll come round. I’m sure he will. If you want him to.’

Sansa sighed again, a little too loudly, from her cross-legged position on Meera’s bedroom floor. Robin’s melodrama was contagious. But she couldn’t help it. She’d told Meera of the bust-up with Sandor and her storming out, and felt no better at all. There had still been no more messages from him. She’d decided that it was really down to him to make the effort, not her. If he did see this as something more than a stupid, three month long hot sex marathon, then he had to demonstrate it. She was hardly expecting a monsoon of roses and him singing outside her house at midnight with a string quartet. But there had been nothing at all. Which just went to show that she’d been wrong about him.

Meera was eyeing her from her perch on the bedroom windowsill. ‘Maybe you just need to tell him properly how you feel? How _do_ you feel?’

 _I like him I like him I like him_ , Sansa thought. ‘It’s just –’ She leaned her head against the radiator. ‘It has been really lovely, but you saw how he was with you guys. He’s not very – sociable. And I am. Maybe I shouldn’t be with someone who isn’t much like me. And anyway, he’s not bothered about it being more than a summer fling.’

‘Did he actually say that?’

‘Not exactly. But that seemed to be the gist.’

Meera glanced out of the window, and then turned and looked properly. ‘Oh, man. He is one of a kind, my brother.’

‘What do you mean?’ Sansa got up and joined her. ‘Oh. Wow.’

***

**Arya**

‘So like, what’s he doing?’ said Missy, gazing at him. 

‘I do not know, bruv,’ said Pyp, standing next to her. ‘I am properly baffled.’

A small crowd (Casterly Rock students, Jojen’s family, Ms. Sand and Mr Martell, a couple of older gay clubbers from town that Jojen’s mum was looking at a little worriedly) were milling in the Reed garden. The focus of everyone’s attention was Jojen, who was standing on a slightly ragged stone pedestal – the usual bird-bath had been broken off and lay against a fence. He was very straight and still, staring steadfastly above everyone’s heads back towards the house. Scattered around the base of the stone were several coloured marker pens. The most striking thing was that even though it was a rather less temperate summer’s day, Jojen was completely naked, apart from his pants (black, minimal).

‘It’s conceptual,’ said Sansa, who always understood everything. ‘ _He’s_ the artwork. The performance.’

‘So Jojen,’ said Arya, who was still quite proud. She was going to be the commercial graphic art girl, doing the rounds at ComicCon, and he was always going to be the _enfant terrible_ lording it up in Soho and Venice with a boy on each arm, winning the Turner Prize or some shit.

‘That’s my brother,’ said Meera, with a slightly incredulous but somehow completely unsurprised grin.

‘My greatest student,’ said Ms. Sand.

‘Very striking,’ said Mr. Martell, with a slight velvety darkness to his voice. 

‘It is so _exciting_!’ shouted Robin, who had thrown a near-tantrum about the idea of not being brought along and was now dancing around Bran’s chair. Lysa had been over-feeding him painkillers and he was a little high.

Arya got it. She walked up to Jojen, picked up a pen, and squinted up. ‘Ready, bro?’

Jojen carried on staring straight ahead.

Arya clicked off the lid of her pen, and began to draw.

‘ _Jokes_ ,’ said Pyp, behind her, drawing the word out into something five times as long with astonished realisation in his voice. ‘This is going to be good.’

***

**Jojen**

He sat in the bathroom looking at his skin, a warm flannel in his hand. Most people had gone home now, off to celebrate their results via the usual outlets of knock-off white wine and paint-stripper cider, rather than attending an exclusive, one-piece art show in a suburban garden. 

Jojen’s mind had been in a pretty incredible place, standing there as people slowly came forward, before ending up surrounding him quite enthusiastically. He had become an art-whore. Thoroughly used, but for all the right reasons. He probably should have videoed it, though plenty of people had stuck their phones up at him. Maybe that would be enough.

Almost everyone had drawn on him in the end, apart from his dad, who was probably still a bit pissed off about the bird-bath. And they all responded in their own way. His legs and torso were covered in cocks and stars and _gayboy_ and _artwanker_ and hearts. Arya had drawn a geisha girl eating a jar of peanut butter. Jon had drawn a mountain on his back. There was _R Mutt (JoJo)_ on the inside of his arm from Ms. Sand, and Mr Martell had taken a very long time writing _precioso_ on his lower stomach in a dark scrawl with the same curl as his moustache, glancing up at him with a purring sort of look as he did so. Jojen had to concentrate on standing quite still at that point.

A knock, and Arya popped her head round the door. Laughed. ‘You look awesome. You should stay like that forever. Tattooed by the world.’

‘Maybe I will,’ he said, and glanced at her. ‘They’re actually a bit harder to get off than I thought, those pens.’

Arya let out one of her machine-gun laughs, the sort that had made him like her so much in the first place. He was glad she had forgiven him so easily. ‘You nutcase. I love it. See you at mine tomorrow?’

‘Totally. Tattooed or otherwise.’

Bran had been the last to come and draw on him. Jojen had wondered, his mind floating weird and free in the garden, if he was going to at all, though of course didn’t break from his boy-statue pose. But, after everyone else had their turn, Bran had got Arya to help him lift himself up onto the arm of his wheelchair, not done anything for a few moments, then written something very carefully. On his inner thigh.

Arya shut the door and opened it again. ‘Hey, wait – what did you get? You didn’t reply to my text.’

‘Oh,’ said Jojen, frowning mildly as if trying to remember. ‘8 A*s, 2 As.’

‘You fucker,’ she said.

‘You?’ She told him. ‘Atta girl,’ he said and she blew him a kiss and stuck two fingers up at him as she shut the door again.

Jojen turned the hot tap on again and soaped up the flannel. Hopefully it would all come off eventually. Apart from the one on his inner thigh. He turned his leg to have another look. Yes. He might well keep that one for a little while.

 _He is and as he is_ , Bran had written, in a neat, looping hand.

***

**Arya**

The next day, Arya was outside Pod’s house. She could hear Uncle Illyn on the lawnmower round the back. She knocked a bit harder. She was having her results-family-party thing later. But there was still time.

Pod answered the door in his tracksuit bottoms and a black t-shirt that said I’m In The Moog. He gave her a kiss. ‘Hey.’ He looked pretty wiped after yet another early start at the egg factory. She had told him they should move him onto bacon or hash-browns, and he still smiled at her joke and didn’t hit her for being insanely annoying.

Arya smiled sweetly. ‘Hey. You tired?’ 

He raised his eyebrows at her as they wandered down the hallway. ‘Yeah. Eggs haven’t got any less boring.’

‘ _Too_ tired?’ she said.

‘For what?’ He glanced round at her and then again a bit more slowly, to find her biting her lip and waggling her admittedly slightly less demonstrative eyebrows than his. He hovered at the foot at the stairs and bit his lip too.

Pod really wasn’t like most guys. When she had asked what he sexy-liked, Arya had expected him to say _I want to come on your tits_ (well, Pod would never say ‘tits’, but still), _come on your face, come on your arse, come up your arse_ , all the stuff that guys talked about, but he (moped, judo, fencing, cupcakes, sex god) was nothing if not unpredictable. Eight minutes after she had arrived, Arya was sitting on Pod’s thighs and Pod was entirely naked and lying on his bed. Tied up.

Arya had decided to execute Pod’s wish in style and had enjoyed a completely and utterly hilarious time chatting to the shop assistant in Millet’s about the merits of various climbing ropes. Now Pod had both of his arms rather robustly fastened above his head and his ankles tied as well. His eyebrows were basically trying to make a complete break for it. To be honest, he looked a little nervous.

‘You asked for it,’ she said, and quite enjoyed the double-meaning. 

He swallowed and nodded. ‘Yes, I did.’ A brave breath in.

Arya wiggled off him and grabbed her bag. ‘You didn’t ask for this, but I brought some ingredients.’

His whole face made a question mark.

‘You can use the rest to bake something awesome,’ she said, dumping a carton of double cream, white chocolate buttons, a tube of strawberry ice cream topping, a tin of ready-made chocolate sauce and a small tub of hundreds and thousands on the pillow next to his head.

This was pretty great, thought Arya, not long after that. Sex and cake, or a pre-cake, anyway. She had her mouth full of strawberry goo and Pod’s stomach and torso looked like Mary Berry’s kitchen counter. Maybe Mary Berry wouldn’t use hundreds and thousands.

Arya wiped her mouth and inched her way up to Pod’s face. Looked at her thumb. It was a bit like blood. Cool. She leant down very close to him. ‘I am a wolf,’ she said. ‘A hungry wolf.’

‘Please will you kiss me now?’ said Pod, softly and a little desperately. 

She hadn’t kissed him once. Not there, anyway. Arya looked at his lips. She felt pretty wolfish. ‘No,’ she said, and proceeded to bite him, quite gently, everywhere else, before taking off all of her clothes and hovering above him.

‘Oh, I forgot to say,’ she said. ‘I’m on the Pill now. So we don’t have to use a condom.’

Pod looked at her in a sort of blissful, mild agony. Scrunched his eyes up and smiled a very anguished smile at her. She clambered up towards his face again and finally kissed him, and it was, it had to be said, the best kiss they had ever had, sticky and plump-lipped and like they’d never ever kissed before.

‘Right,’ she said, pulling away, leaving a tiny bit of candy on his lip. ‘Rargh.’

***

**Sansa**

‘Darling, would you at least chop some carrots up?’ 

Sansa was sitting in her trackies, her hood up, staring out of the kitchen window into the back garden, and drinking a self-made banana and peanut butter smoothie that was making her feel quite sick. ‘Ok,’ she said, and pushed herself off, feeling entirely miserable. She’d succumbed to sending Sandor a message. Just a _hi_. And heard nothing back. 

She was single again, she supposed. 

Her mum was making enough food to feed the entire street. She’d been so pleased about Arya’s results that she’d gone out and bought extra of all of her favourite foods, which were manifold. The kitchen was already filled with sausages and salads and watermelon and ten types of cheese. 

‘Yeah. Sorry.’ She slid off the breakfast barstool and shuffled over to the kitchen counter. 

Her mum eyed her. Sansa hadn’t told them much about Sandor really, though they knew that he had been Arya’s counsellor. ‘Anything you’d like to talk about?’ she said.

BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent was on in the background, with someone reporting from Guinea-Bisseau. Sansa bit her lip. She should really stop being so pathetic and realise how tiny her stupid First World Problems were. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, extremely heavily, wondering when she would next have sex with someone and how they could possibly match up to Sandor’s extreme, curse-filled enthusiasm. And who would make her a better cup of tea than him, or let her snuggle up under his arm and read Kant aloud in a stupid German accent.

‘Ow.’ The knife slid just a little into her thumb. ‘For fuck’s sake.’

‘Sansa.’ Her mum looked at her. ‘What is wrong with you? You’re acting -’ she took a breath. ‘Well, you’re acting a little like your sister used to.’

There was a knock on the door. Sansa turned her head to the hallway, and didn’t move.

‘Perhaps you could get that?’ 

Sansa sighed again. ‘Ok.’ She dragged her slippered feet along the wooden-floored hallway, sucking the seeped blood from her thumb and trying to think about poor people in Guinea-Bisseau. 

As she opened the door, her heart trampolined into her throat.

It was Sandor. He’d been looking at the ground and quickly lifted his head, and his expression was a dark streak of surprise and relief and defensiveness.

She stood there, her thumb still in her mouth. ‘Oh.’ 

He was wearing the jeans she liked the best, and his workman’s boots and one of those grey t-shirts (he had several, all the same) which showed just a little bit more of his upper arms. He glanced at the blood on her thumb, which was stinging a little. Frowned, in a way that seemed to interrupt whatever expression he’d been trying to maintain. ‘You alright?’

She was staring at him. She’d never given him her address here. ‘You’re -’ She eyed her thumb. ‘Yes. What are you doing here?’ Her voice had shrunk.

He looked pained, as if he knew he was about to withstand profound amounts of torture. ‘I thought you wanted me to – is it not –’ he let out a small, awkward breath as he looked past her shoulder down the hallway. ‘Where is everyone?’

Sansa was beginning to feel rather strange. Sort of pink and marshmallowy. ‘Are you here for Arya’s results party?’

If at that moment, the ground had opened up beneath him and zombies had lifted pus-weeping hands and dragged him down to hell, Sandor probably would have looked happier. He drew his thumb and forefingers towards each other over his forehead. ‘Aye. She told me about it.’

‘You’re two hours early.’

He looked at his watch. ‘Your sister said two.’

‘My sister was messing with you.’

He gazed at her before closing his eyes in the sort of quiet exasperation that also said he would get Arya for it later. ‘Shall I come back in a bit, then?’

‘No – no, of course not.’ She really didn’t know what to say.

They stood staring at each other. 

‘Sansa, I know it’s the summer, but can you please not just leave the front door -’ Her mum was walking down the hallway, and stopped. ‘Hello.’ A subtly graceful upwards arch in the word.

Sansa suddenly had an attack of nerves. She felt completely unprepared. This moment was supposed to be over a civilised dinner, in which she was looking fabulous and mature and not unshowered and teenagery. ‘Mum, um, so, this is -’ 

‘Sandor,’ he said.

Catelyn did not know about Sansa’s predeliction for older men (fancying Dr Seaworth, making an ineffectual pass at her own work colleague Jorah, and of course the whole Petyr disaster). However, years of having to placate various extremely senior government officials who believed that there was actually a new ice age approaching and not catastrophic global warming meant that she was not outwardly fazed by Sandor’s late-ish thirties vibe. ‘Of course you are,’ she said, reaching the doorway, her hand out, a warm, proud smile. 

Five minutes later, Sansa was standing next to him in the kitchen, their hips not quite touching, listening to Sandor talk in a totally normal, if quite blokey, fashion to her dad about Scottish football.

‘Well, I always kept an eye on Caledonian Thistle myself,’ said Ned, turning towards the kettle that had just switched itself off. Catelyn was taking plates of food out into the garden.

‘Bunch of soft bastards, that lot,’ said Sandor, and then coughed into his hand. 

‘Steady now,’ said Ned. ‘How do you take it?’

‘Builder’s,’ said Sansa, automatically. ‘If a builder is on milk rations.’

Sandor flicked a glance at her and Sansa gave him a slow, half-bitten-in smile. She was trying not to look at all the dark hair on his forearm. That little scar on the bone in his wrist. She could smell him, too, that indefinable warm smell that was like baked bread and vegetables and mud and deodorant.

‘Builder’s it is,’ said Ned, passing Sandor a mug and glancing between them. ‘Well, make yourself at home. People won’t be coming for a while yet. Where is your sister?’

‘No idea,’ said Sansa, although she had a pretty good idea, as Arya had left the house with a Sainsbury’s bag full of tooth-rotting things and quite a witchy glint in her eye. ‘She’ll turn up.’

‘She’d better,’ her dad said, giving Sandor a smiling nod as he left the room.

Sandor watched him go and then his entire body seemed to sag, as if he’d been holding in gallons of air. He looked exhausted. And relieved.

‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ Sansa said, quietly, half-into her own cup, sneaking a look at him. She didn’t want to push her luck. Not yet.

‘No,’ he said, a huge tidal-wave breath rushing from him. He glanced at her again, wary and careful. Followed up with the sort of look he would give her if she was clad only in her best underwear, even though she was basically in pajamas. A look that could burn through steel.

I know you like me, she thought. Properly like me. She turned to him, opened her mouth, and he seemed to be about to say something too, when the door slammed open, richocheted off the edge of the kitchen counter (already padded for safety) and slammed shut again behind Rickon. A glass fell off the table and rolled along the floor.

‘Graargh,’ he said, staring at Sandor, and quivering a little.

‘This is my brother,’ said Sansa. ‘Rickon.’

‘Alright, fella,’ said Sandor, eyeing him. ‘What’ve you got there?’

Rickon was holding a plastic spear. He held it up and stabbed it into Sandor’s stomach. 

‘You got me,’ said Sandor, not moving an inch.

Rickon pushed a bit harder. 

Sandor shifted his hips. ‘That’s what I thought your dad was going to do to me for shagging your sister.’

Sansa elbowed him. ‘Shhh.’ Her brother made a grunting, pirate-ish sort of noise.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘That actually hurts a wee bit now.’

‘Rickon,’ said Sansa. ‘Go and chew on some bones or something. And remember, you’re going to be nice to Robin this afternoon. No chanting. No spears.’

Rickon withdrew his weapon. ‘Hmmph,’ he said, and stalked out of the room.

They both gazed at the door. ‘Did you ever read ‘Lord of the Flies’?’ she said.

‘Saw the film,’ said Sandor. 

‘I think Rickon has absorbed it into his bloodstream somehow.’ She smiled at him. He looked at her mouth and up at her, and she was sure then that she had him. He looked so desperate for her not to hate him. ‘Want to meet Bran?’ she said. ‘He’s quite a lot less Lord of the Flies, if that’s any help.’

Sandor took a deep breath. ‘Ok,’ he said.

***

**Arya**

‘Sorry,’ said Pod.

‘That is totally and awesomely fine. It was very cool.’ Arya had basically sat on Pod and then it had all been over, which was not what usually happened. ‘What did it feel like?’ She looked over at him. ‘You know, without the condom?’

‘Yeah. Amazing,’ said Pod.

‘Yeah,’ said Arya, who was feeling pretty squelchy.

He lifted his head up and looked down at himself. ‘I think I should probably have a shower before we go to yours.’

‘ _God_ , Pod, you’re so OCD.’ She grinned at him. ‘I could just lick you clean, like a plate.’ She lifted one of her legs up. Chocolate sauce on her inner thigh. ‘Maybe I need one too.’

‘I love you,’ he said, and her heart did a massively epic, end-of-movie explosion. They didn’t say it very often. It still felt sort of crazy. 

‘I do too,’ she said. ‘You.’ She gave a heavy sigh, and knew she shouldn’t say what she was about to say, but said it anyway. ‘It’s probably no good though, is it?’

‘What?’

‘To be, you know.’ she flicked her eyes up at him. ‘In love with you.’

There was a lightly confused pause. ‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re going to go away in September and probably fall in love with some engineering goddess student who can build suspension bridges with her mind.’

A small breath that was a laugh. ‘You know there are only about two female students in the engineering department every year.’

‘Well, that’s even worse. They’ve got their pick of all the guys and they’ll make a beeline for you because you’re the hottest one.’

‘It’s only London. It’s not far.’ His voice was like a bedtime story-reader. ‘You can come and visit me. And I’ll come back.’

‘But -’ I’ll seem young, she thought. I’ll only be in Year 12. You’ll be a cradle-snatcher.

‘Arya.’ Pod put a hand in her hair and pulled out two chocolate buttons. ‘Honest. I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Ok,’ she said, already halfway through gutting a second engineering girl-student in her mind and drowning her in a vat of hundreds and thousands.

‘Um, Arya?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Could you untie my feet now, please?’

She glanced down at his spread-eagled, chocolate-covered thighs. ‘Oh. Yeah. Sorry.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **  
>  **   
>  PROFESSOR SWIMMING FOX'S TWENTIETH CENTURY ART CLASS! **  
>  **   
>  Conceptualism!
> 
> Conceptual art prizes the idea over the formal elements of an artwork, and covers a broad range of movements and styles. From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, Conceptual artists put on performances and happenings that rejected traditional ideas about art, with aesthetics, expression, skill and marketability all being irrelevant. It follows a chronology of art – Cubism, Dada, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art) that looked to expand the boundaries of art.
> 
> Sometimes the material presence of a work is extremely minimal. Often, if the artist began the artwork, the museum or gallery and the audience in some way completed it; this is known as 'institutional critique,' an is an even greater shift away from object-based art to pointedly expressing cultural values of society at large. Other forms might be installations, body art or earth/landscape art.
> 
> Much Conceptual art is self-conscious or self-referential. Like Duchamp and other modernists, they created art that is about art, and pushed its limits by using minimal materials and even text.
> 
> Key conceptualists! Joseph Beuys, Sol LeWitt, Jenny Holzer, Damien Hirst, Marina Ambramovich, Yoko Ono.
> 
>  **HELPFUL BRITISH NOTES**  
>  Hundreds and thousands = what we call sprinkles or sugar strands.
> 
> Mary Berry = the queen of the British public’s favourite show, The Great British Bake-Off.
> 
> Builder’s tea = how we describe strong English tea. Well-brewed and with not much more than a dash of milk – they way that builders, and the more um, more common sort take it. Sometimes. I of course take it medium-brewed with quite a lot of milk and I don’t care what anyone says.
> 
>  **  
> PRETENTIOUS BRAN BONUS FEATURE**  
>  ‘He is and as he is’ is a quote from Gerturde Stein’s poem for Picasso (I’m mixing up my chapter themes a bit). It’s lovely and best of all you can [hear the writer herself read it here!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJEIAGULmPQ)
> 
> Oh, and _R Mutt_ is what Marcel Duchamp signed his famous Dadaist urinal.


	8. Fluxus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **RIGHT, that's me done! See you back in my long-languishing Wolfgirl In Braavos and Ragnar In Westeros fics, at some point :) TA MUCHLY FOR THE COMMENTZ.**

_‘The main intention was to indicate a new beginning.. ..or simply a revolutionary act.’ Joseph Beuys_

_‘In Fluxus there has never been any attempt to agree on aims or methods; individuals with something unnameable in common have simply naturally coalesced.’ Georges Brecht_

***

**Arya**

‘Sorry sorry sorry,’ said Arya, bursting into the house, with Pod behind her.

‘Ah. The prodigal daughter returns,’ said her dad, giving her a look that was both wry and rather admonishing, before looking at his watch pointedly. 

Her mum came into the house. ‘ _Arya_.’ Relieved frustration threaded into her voice. ‘Where have you _been_?’

‘Sorry. Got a bit –’ Arya glanced at Pod, who was beginning to blush the colour of strawberry ice cream topping. He was no good at hiding anything. ‘Tied up.’ She tried to control her laugh and it emerged as a tiny snort.

‘Well, you’re here now. Come on.’ Her mum shooed her out into the garden, where a banner saying ‘WELL DONE ARYA!’ was strung between the two trees, although Rickon was a third of a way up one of them attacking it with a large stick.

There was a muted cheer from the small crowd of family as they saw her, and Arya felt both madly happy and mortified. ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’ she said, giving quite a florid bow and then doing an _up yours action_ with her arms. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘Cousin Arya, you have the mind of a true genius!’ said Robin, who was wearing a 1940s bomber pilot jacket – one sleeve hanging loose due to his plaster cast – and had a _girl_ with him. A girl, with brown hair and a scarred forehead. Robin seemed to have totally scored. 

‘Yeah, Robin, just call me Einstein from now on,’ she said, before turning to her mum. ‘Can I have some champagne?’

Catelyn raised an eyebrow at her. ‘You’re sixteen.’

‘Sixteen and mad clever. Go on.’

Her mum gave a relenting smile. ‘Just this once. The next one’s when you get your A-Levels.’

Sandor was here, leaning against the wall, Sansa sitting next to him, unsubtly rubbing his calf with her foot. Like _that_ had lasted long. God, he was such a sucker. They both were. 

There was the faint slam of the front door and a shout of _hello_. A male voice. Every Stark looked at each other.

‘Fuck!’ said Arya, and ran back through the house to find Robb lugging a massive rucksack into the porch. She jumped on him. 

‘Hey, little sis,’ he said, staggering back into the wall. ‘Jesus, give me a second.’

‘I missed you,’ she said, half-falling off him. ‘Did you have a good time? Did you get busted for smuggling drugs? Do you shag a girl in every port?’

‘The best,’ said Robb, who had already been talking over email about going back to Australia to live. ‘And no, and not quite every port, but Theon gave it a good go.’ He looked really brown and freckled.

‘Oh my god!’ said Sansa, who had appeared in the hallway. ‘Look at your _beard_.’ She flung her arms over Robb, and was closely followed by Rickon (moving like a cannonball into Robb’s gut) and Bran (wheeling up rather more calmly). 

Arya was quite blissfully trapped in a massive Starkball-hug, half-perched on the arm of Bran’s chair and with Rickon trying to gnaw on her elbow. Her parents were in the mix now, too, exclaiming over Robb’s tan and how long his hair had grown. 

The doorbell rang again. Jojen was just putting out his fag and blowing out the last of his smoke as Arya opened the door. ‘Hello,’ he said, eyeing the tangle of Starks behind her. ‘Is this good timing?’ There was a still a bit of marker pen on his neck.

‘If you want a hug, then yes,’ said Arya, introducing Jojen to Robb before pulling on her eldest brother’s hand. ‘Come and meet Pod,’ she said. ‘He’s awesome.’

‘And Sandor,’ said Sansa, following them. ‘You have to meet him, too.’

***

**Sansa**

‘So, Robin, are you going to introduce us?’

Robin had been parading round the garden with Shireen, who looked quite sweet and patient, on his arm as if they were in a Regency novel. Sansa was sitting on a garden chair next to Sandor, who seemed to have been grateful to talk to Pod for a bit whilst most of her insane family jumped on each other and tried to get stories out of a very exhausted-looking Robb.

‘Yes, Cousin Sansa,’ said Robin, coming to halt in front of her and unfolding his working arm grandiosely. ‘I have the pleasure of presenting Miss Shireen Baratheon.’

Sandor snorted into his glass of ale.

‘Hello,’ said Shireen, who had bright eyes and a skirt with daffodils on it. 

‘Hello, Shireen,’ said Sansa, shaking her hand. ‘Lovely to meet you.’

‘We must perambulate,’ said Robin. ‘I am giving Shireen a private repeat performance of my monologue and I can remember it better when we walk.’

Shireen gave Sansa a grin. ‘No one has ever written me a play before.'

‘No one’s ever written me a play _ever_ ,’ said Sansa. ‘You’re a very lucky girl.’

Sandor watched them drift off for another tour around the apple tree. ‘If you think I’m going to write you a play, you’ve another thing coming.’

‘You don’t have to write me a play,’ she said, and carefully leant against him again. Shoulder to shoulder. ‘I’m just happy you’re here. It’s – it’s not too tortuous, is it?’

‘Well, it’s the bloody opposite of my family life, but –’ he glanced at her. ‘No, it’s ok.’ A slow, not-quite smile.

There had been no time for them to really speak properly yet. She’d nipped upstairs to get changed but decided that it wasn’t the time for fumblings and shoutings in her wardrobe. He’d come. That was enough of a sign, that he’d chosen to see her again in the most high-pressure situation, surrounded by her entire family.

Robb had his arm round their dad’s shoulders and a beer in his other hand, yawning. Lysa was snogging Thoros in the corner. Arya was sitting on Pod’s lap, shouting something about chocolate sauce while he tried to put his hand over mouth. And Jojen was ambling towards Bran.

***

**Jojen**

Today, Bran was wearing a striped Breton-style t-shirt and Jojen was trying very hard not to look at his upper arms, which were very slim but quite clearly strong, doubtless from all the chair action. Of course, he was always going to come to Arya’s party, but he’d mostly been thinking about Bran for the last twenty-seven hours. He’d looked up Gertrude Stein and felt immeasurably happy. _He is and as he is, and as he is and he is._

Bran wheeling gently towards the bottom end of the garden away from everyone, telling him about Robb’s round-the-world trip. Their elder brother was pretty damned hot, to be honest, albeit in a rather more straightforward, robust sort of way. Good beard.

Jojen could not imagine Bran with a beard. His skin was like classical white marble. Or like the underside of a mushroom, just turned up from the earth. ‘Nice,’ he said, mostly about Robb’s journey. His head felt a bit fizzy from the champagne. 

Bran had stopped just behind the bigger oak tree at the back fence and was gazing at him. ‘I liked your piece. Yesterday.’ So very serious, and yet every word as light as gossamer. 

‘Thanks.’ Jojen glanced at him, delicately flicking cigarette ash into the grass and sitting on the low, scooped branch, which bent only a little under his weight. ‘I think it was a bit too Fluxus for some people.’

‘I don’t know what that means,’ said Bran.

He had the confidence to say that he didn’t understand something. Jojen couldn’t think of many people their age like that. ‘Destroying the boundaries between art and life,’ he said, wondering if he was sitting a bit too close to him. Invading his personal space. 

‘Ok,’ said Bran. ‘That makes sense. And do you feel better? For doing that?’

No one else had asked him that, or anything about it. Just laughed and graffited the hell out of him. ‘Not many people totally get me, you know,’ said Jojen, feeling quite outlandish, for him. ‘But you do.’

Bran looked at his palms, resting on his lap. Back up. ‘I’d quite like to.’

Jojen wasn’t very much used to his heart unfurling like a Georgia O’Keefe flower. He stubbed his cigarette out on the trunk of the tree. Leaned over and kissed Bran.

Sometimes kisses are like works of art, Jojen thought. They could be Cubist, or Impressionist, or Surrealist, if you counted the time he went to the party in the woods surrounded by much older, much hairier men in fairy wings. And sometimes they were just kisses. Like this one. You could put a frame round it and call it art, but you didn’t have to. It could just be exactly what it was.

He pulled away, and Bran’s eyes were like great deep pools, before he blinked. 

‘You haven’t done that before,’ said Jojen.

‘How do you know?’ He looked careful, and a little astonished, and the inside of his lip was the colour of an early summer plum.

‘I know everything.’ Apart from how he felt about this boy, until right now. ‘Almost everything.’

***

**Sansa**

There was a hand on her back. ‘I’m gonna head off, I think,’ Sandor said, gently scratchy, in her ear.

She turned round to him, her eyes pleading. She’d been a bit distracted by Robb’s entrance. ‘No, stay. Just a bit longer. I haven’t seen you. Enough.’ She bit her lip.

He looked at her mouth for rather a long moment, and back up at her. ‘Alright. But you’re getting me another beer.’

‘Yes, _sir_ ,’ she said rather merrily, and leaned over to kiss him very gently on the neck, the spot she liked that (amazingly) didn’t have any hair on it.

‘Christ Jesus,’ he said, very softly. ‘Better be quick about it.’

She practically skipped down the corridor. It was going to be alright. Definitely. She was absolutely and entirely not single. Halfway down, she stopped, half-skidded, held her breath as she stared, and dashed back out into the garden over to her sister.

‘Arya,’ she whispered, tugging on her sleeve. 

Arya was laughing hysterically at Robin as he loudly reeled off ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ to Shireen. ‘What?’ she said.

Sansa was already pulling her away. ‘You have to come and see this.’

She took her back into the hallway and to the door, just ajar, of Bran’s bedroom. They both looked in. Jojen was leaning over Bran, and his hand was quite delicately on his cheek, and they were totally kissing. Quite a lot.

‘No fucking way,’ said Arya under her breath.

‘I knew it,’ whispered Sansa, as if she had just won a million pounds, and that made Arya blink and look at her. 

She had remembered what the bet was. ‘Oh fuck,’ she said.

Sansa collapsed into quiet giggles.

***

**Arya**

‘Hey,’ said Arya.

Sandor was leaning against the low brick wall, looking like the sun was too much for him again. Scowling at it a bit. ‘Hey yourself.’

‘Sansa said to give you this.’ She handed him a bottle of beer.

He looked a little disappointed, glancing past her, obviously looking for her sister. Ugh. ‘Ok,’ he said, cracking it against the edge of the wall to bust the lid off. 

She stood there. ‘Um.’

He looked over at her impatiently.

She scratched her nose. Shifted her weight. Glanced round at Sansa, who was now totally watching in the shade of the oak tree. God, she hated her sometimes.

‘Out with it, then,’ he said, looking bored.

Arya took a deep breath and leaned in for a hug, her arms around his shoulders, her head briefly on his chest. 

When she pulled back, he was looking at her like she had gone completely insane. ‘Jesus Christ. What the fuck was that for?’

I lost a bet, she thought. ‘Um, yeah, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for always being mean and I like you really and it’s ok that you’re with Sansa and thanks for everything.’ She felt like stabbing herself in five different places.

Sandor stared at her, as if waiting for the punchline. Blinked. Folded his arms. ‘Ok,’ he said, the word drawn out. 

‘Yeah, so.’ She rubbed her palm over her eyes, just to hide behind it. Peeked him through her fingers.

He still looked darkly and utterly puzzled, but there was a trace of amusement there. He offered her his beer, and she took a massive, long gulp. And another, even though it was a gross dark beer that tasted of old cat piss, shutting her eyes. 

She felt his fingers close around the bottle. The gentle force of him as he took it back. ‘Alright, steady on, you guzzler. I don’t want your folks to kick me out.’

Arya sat down next to him on the wall. 

‘Someone put you up to that, did they?’ He was looking towards the oak tree.

‘No.’ She glanced up at Sansa, who had her arm in Pod’s and was pointing at them both. ‘Yes. But -’ she kicked the wall with her heel. ‘I guess it’s true, so.’ Kicked some more.

Sandor let out a long breath through his nose, the sound of a really sleepy horse being taken to the knacker’s yard. There was a weird moment where neither of them were saying anything, before he put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed, probably quite delicately for him, but still with the sort of force that could crush cars. He released her just as quickly. ‘Go on, crackerjack. Off with you.’

She walked back to Sansa, who was doing a little dance around Pod. Her sister was so going to get it. Maybe Arya would make her do that Thoros-penis-trick thing anyway.

***

**Sansa**

Sansa was summery and fizzy on gin. Bran had kissed Jojen – in fact, they still hadn’t emerged from his bedroom, and Sansa and Arya kept having to cover for them to their parents. Robin had sung Bohemian Rhapsody (all the parts, with one-armed actions) for everyone and Thoros had indeed done a few magic tricks (thankfully not with his penis as much as Arya kept glaringly wiggling her eyebrows at Sansa). Everyone had eaten Pod’s muffins, which had an insane amount of hundreds and thousands on them. 

Her hand was clasped. Warm fingers, a gently firm grip. ‘I’m off.’

She looked at Sandor’s dark summer-stormcloud eyes and without letting go of his hand, took him to say his goodbyes (a variety of solid handshakes and defensive gestures, depending on the member of the family) before leading him through the house to the front door. She stood on the porch ledge, making her tall enough to – well, he was still far taller.

'I am so happy you came,’ she said.

'Come back to mine and tell me that,’ he said straight back, before his voice sunk even lower. ‘And call me sir again.’

She grinned. Or _ginned_. ‘I didn’t think you’d be into that.’

‘Me neither, but -’ his bottom lip was tugged into his tooth as he eyed her. 

'I'm staying here tonight,’ she said. Sandor raised his eyebrows, half-challenging. Sansa dropped a shoulder, still grinning. ‘Robb’s back. It’s the first time we’ve all been together for over a year.'

'Ok,’ he said. The slightest smile caught on his face, amongst all the dark scratchiness.

'I'm sorry about what I said.'

'Don't be. I deserved it.' He took a step closer to her and his voice disappeared several feet under the earth. 'Look, I just haven't done this before.’ His head was tipped downwards but he glanced back up at her. ‘I don't know what I'm doing.' There was a vulnerability that she had never seen before, and it made her turn into the filling in a Victoria sponge. 

‘I want to be with you,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how long it will last, but I’m not – I wasn’t just using you. For practice. Though I have had quite a lot of practice.’

He didn’t jump on her joke. ‘Do you not think – the age is a bit –’ he looked itchy, unhappy. ‘I’m far too old for you. Old enough to be your dad’s damned golfing partner. It’s not the bloody Middle Ages.’

‘I don’t care.’

He gazed at her, as if waiting for the caveat.

‘I don’t _care_ ,’ she said again, raising her eyebrows and putting her arms around his neck. 

His chest rose, a long, dredged breath. She listened to it fall again and thought of a far-off hurricane, disappearing. Slowly his arms came around her waist and he pulled her in, a slightly crushing grizzly bear-hug. 'Will you come away with me?’ he said, very quietly. ‘For a few days somewhere?'

‘Somewhere hot?’ she said into his ear. Let the tip of her tongue touch his earlobe, where his burn scar tautened the skin.

His grip tightened. ‘I was thinking Scotland, but maybe not in that case.’

‘I’ll go wherever you want,’ she said, and put her hand under his beard. Kissed him. And the kiss seemed like it was their first, tentative and slow, followed by another, and another. Each one with the slightest pause, as if listening for something. He tasted of ale and watermelon.

‘Ok, he said, into her mouth, and he sounded sad, and happy, and relieved.

***

**Jojen**

They had finally stopped kissing. The kisses had been exquisite, finely-crafted things. Sculpted. Cubist. 

Jojen was feeling rather light-headed. He had one hand on Bran’s knee. He looked down at it. ‘You can’t feel that, can you?’ 

‘No.’ There was the faintest shade of dusk-pink on one cheek, but otherwise, Bran looked very calm. ‘You haven't asked me about them. My legs.'

'Do you want me to ask you about them?' Jojen knew already that it was just the legs. Both from early Arya reports and from the slight protrusion he’d caught in the corner of his eye about two minutes ago.

'I don't know. Most people ply me with questions, in a sympathetic way, or try and avoid it completely. You just - I don't know, you're different about it.'

I know you will walk again, Jojen thought. I’ve seen it. Now in his dreams, the smashed-up boy, looking a little older, got up again and walked. Slender, graceful and far taller than he had imagined. ‘He is and as he is,’ Jojen said.

Bran looked pensive. Utterly accepting. Zen.

Jojen rested both of his hands on the arm of his wheelchair. ‘What do you like?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘ _Like_ ,’ Jojen said, gazing at Bran. He was beautifully-cut sushi with wasabi jus artfully dabbed on the plate. He was calligraphy, painted with patient slowness. Picasso. He was feng shui in human form. ‘What are you into?’

‘Um.’ Bran looked with deeply precise thought into the middle of the room. ‘Reading. Trees. Magic. Well, illusion, really. Ancient fortune telling. The tamales we had all the time in Guatemala. And Turkish Delight.’ He smiled. 

‘Have you read any Thomas Mann?’

‘No.’

‘I want to read you Thomas Mann.’

‘Ok. Have you read any Frank O’Hara?’

Jojen shook his head. ‘Who is that?’

‘An 20th-century American poet. Short, simple poems. Almost like haiku.’

Jojen practically fainted. 

Bran twisted behind him to his desk, picking up a small cardboard box with a ribbon around it. He opened it. Small, square cubes, covered in thick white icing sugar. ‘Want one?’

Jojen nodded.

Bran looked at the box for a moment before plucking out a square and, after the merest sliver of hesitation, putting his fingers towards Jojen’s mouth. Jojen, without any hesitation at all, leaned forward and took it between his teeth. His bottom lip touched Bran’s thumb. Bran watched Jojen’s mouth rather intently, before licking the sugar-dust away from his own thumb, a single, cat-like flick. It was absolutely the sexiest thing that had ever happened to Jojen. He wondered if this was what being on laudanum felt like. 

Bran glanced at his knees. Almost embarrassed, but not quite. Jojen rather suspected that it would take rather a lot to ruffle this boy. Even more than it took him.

The piece of Turkish Delight stuck to the roof of his mouth. Gelatinous aniseed and sweet dust. It made him desperately want to kiss him again. ‘When is your birthday?’ Jojen said.

Bran looked a little puzzled. ‘January 12th. Why?’

A swift calculation, like a switchblade flicking open and shut. Nineteen weeks and five days until Bran would be sixteen. 

‘No reason,’ he said, and smiled at him, a lazy, foxish smile.

Maybe Jojen really would wait this time. If Bran wanted to. Because, Jojen knew from the green dreams winding through his blood, or maybe just from his soul, that here, there was a future.

**END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **  
>  **   
>  FINAL PICSET!   
> 
> 
> **  
> PROFESSOR SWIMMINGFOX’S TWENTIETH-CENTURY ART CLASS!**  
>  Fluxus!
> 
> Fluxus was an international group of artists, composers and designers in the 1960s and had a strong flavour of anti-art and non-commercialism. Heavily influenced by awesome composer and thinker John Cage, who believed that artists should embark on a piece without knowing its final incarnation, as well as Duchamp’s readymades. artists used performance, sound visual art and urban planning, and put on happenings in New York lofts. Maciunas opened Fluxshops and a Fluxhall, where you could buy very easily affordable art pieces such as tin cans filled with poems, altered playing cards and plastic food. Some communes were set up.
> 
> Fluxus female artists often made work about the body – Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut Piece,’ in which audience members come up to her and cut off a scrap of her clothing, influenced my idea for Jojen’s piece.
> 
> Maciunas’ funeral was dubbed ‘Fluxfeast and Wake’ and guests only ate foods that were black, white or purple.
> 
> My favourite Fluxus pieces are the compositions that say things like ‘push a grand piano through a wall,’ or ‘feed a grand piano hay.’ They are ‘event scores’ which often open out the performance to non-professionals.
> 
> Key Fluxus people! Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono, John Cage, George Maciunas, LaMonte Young.


End file.
